


Terrapin

by superblackmarket



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Elements of trauma/non-con (in the past), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:45:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3734428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superblackmarket/pseuds/superblackmarket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An inadvertent heroic deed throws Daryl into the orbit of Rick Grimes. The connection is immediate, as visceral as it is baffling. Daryl is at loose ends with his brother in prison, and Rick is struggling to keep his family afloat. A friendship, however dubious, grows between them, but Daryl has his preoccupations and Rick wants more than Daryl might be willing, or able, to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. B Goode

**Author's Note:**

> This began as an original story, but I soon realized I was just writing thinly veiled Rick and Daryl, so why not call it what it is! A rough version of the story is finished, I’ll be revising as I go and updates should be pretty regular. I think we’re looking at 10-12 chapters, maybe. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! You’re all rad.

 

  
It was the damndest thing, the song in the woods. Deer season. Bad enough that the county had teamed up with bleeding-heart liberals to ban antlerless deer, now some songbird scaring off all the bucks between here and Carolina. 

_Go go_

_Go Johnny go_

_Go_

Quiet. That’s what you needed. Just you and the forest and the wind in the trees. When he was a kid he’d got within a few feet of a doe, close enough to see the ticks moving on her pelt. He counted them, one two three four, then he pulled the trigger. She never heard him coming, that’s how.  

_Go Johnny go_

_Go_

_Go Johnny go_

His vantage was screwed. No deer was gonna show its antlers within a mile of this damn ruckus. He slung his crossbow over his shoulder and climbed down the tree. Scrubbed the pinesap from his hands. At least he could find them, him or her, and nicely ask them to shut the hell up, then maybe he’d have the chance to scout a new lookout before he lost the light.

He tracked the voice easily. Damn thing, he was pretty sure it was a girl’s, seemed like it was stuck on the chorus, cos it was all _go Johnny go go go_ and never the log cabin or the boy with the guitar on his back. He wasn’t stupid, he knew it was a story that went somewhere.

He came on something between a shack and a deer stand, a couple boards hammered into an enclosed structure between two white pines, where the song was coming from. He spat first then clomped up the steps. Squinted into the gloom.

 _Go Johnny go_ the girl was crumpled on a blanket. A cable binding her ankles padlocked to the wall. A dog’s water bowl half full within reach. She was staring at him but not seeing him. She wore a filthy SpongeBob SquarePants tshirt too small and a pair of dingy underpants.

“Hey!”

With one eye swollen shut she blinked up at him through a ratnest of hair, almost like she was winking. _Go Johnny go_ she sang in the hoarse voice he’d heard through the trees _go go Johnny_

“Hey! Girl, you with me?” He waved his hand in front of her face.

_Go go_

_Johnny B Goode_

She smiled. Her lip split and blood ran down her chin. 

“Girl, what the hell you –”

 _Go Johnny B Goode_ ,she repeated.

He pulled his hunting knife from its sheath at his waist and she flinched from him, scrabbling against the wall.

“Girl, I aint gonna hurt you, I’m tryna cut you loose.” He used his cornered-animal voice, the one he used when he tracked a wounded deer to the place it fell and rested a hand on its fur before gently slitting its throat. Didn’t work on her so he hummed tunelessly, trying to remember how the song went.

Worked like a charm. She grinned at him, revealing a bloody mess of mangled gums and broken teeth.

Carefully, deliberately, he went to work at the cable around her ankles, buried in swollen flesh and trapped circulation. “C’mon girl,” he said when she was free but she couldn’t stand, even braced against his shoulder. So he picked her up bride-style, she didn’t weigh nothing, and got them out of the shack. He was glad for his bow on his back and his knife in his belt, he’d be a fair match for

but the woods were silent, reassuring, they’d tell him if anyone was close.

She never got any heavier. He retraced his steps, putting some distance between them and that shack, then veered west up to the road. Standing on the shoulder of County Road G with her in his arms he wondered what to do. He’d been in the woods three days now, miles out from King’s County. Not even a half-dead cellphone and service was shit anyway. He looked down and made sure she was still breathing. Her eyes were shut and he wondered if she was asleep, or maybe passed out.

So he set off towards town. Ten, fifteen miles out, but she didn’t weigh nothing. Trickle of blood leaking from that awful gaping mouth. Then finally an act of providence, headlights in the distance. He flagged down the passing truck.

 

xxx

 

Daryl had to prod the startled truck driver into action, pounding on the window til the man unlocked his doors. He hauled the girl into the cab, unconscious and all sprawled over his lap, smearing blood across the vinyl seat.

“Call the cops,” he ordered.

“What the fuck – the fuck is this?” the man stammered, looking terrified. “You do that to her?”

“No, dipshit,” he snarled. “I fucken found her, out in the woods, now call the cops ‘fore she stops breathing.”

The driver scrambled for his phone, nearly dropping it before he got the three numbers punched in. _9-1-1. Please state the nature of your emergency._

“There’s a girl here, she’s hurt – guy found her in the woods. We’re on the road – County G, maybe forty miles from Atlanta – yeah, we’ll – no, she aint conscious. We’ll be here.” He clicked off. “They said twenty minutes.”

Daryl didn’t know what had happened to her, what all was wrong with her, so he kept her braced against his chest. Her head lolled back against his shoulder. A grotesque pantomime of intimacy. “You got a blanket or somethin?” he asked the driver.

The man dug out a ratty flannel which Daryl wrapped around her. He kept his eyes on the dashboard clock, drumming his fingers against the window. Day was fucked. Three days busting his ass in the woods, no big game to show for it, and now he’d walked straight into trouble. Felt like a little bitch, too, waiting for his first voluntary rendezvous with the cops. His brother would never let him hear the end of it, the bastard.

“You from round these parts?”

He jerked his head.

“I was driving back to Atlanta – can’t say I expected my day to turn out like this.” He stuck out his hand, which Daryl ignored. “Name’s T-Dog.”

“’S a stupid fucken name,” Daryl mumbled.

“Not as stupid as Theodore, which is the one my momma gave me.” He smiled good-humoredly. “What about you, Daniel Boone? Got a name?”

“Dixon. Daryl Dixon.” It was a concession, grudging. But he knew he’d be giving his name out, signing it, a dozen more times before the day was out, and at least this city boy with his wannabe gangster-ass name was too slicker to know ‘Dixon’ was something you was supposed to flinch away from, if you knew what was good for you.

“Aint it your lucky day, playin’ hero,” said T-Dog.

“Aint no hero, just my shit fucken luck,” Daryl said, reaching for the girl’s wrist. Finding her pulse. Slow and steady. “Rather be draggin home a buck, not her dumb ass.”

“How’d you find her?”

“Tied up in a shack,” Daryl said shortly. T-Dog sucked a sharp breath in, whistling through his teeth. Daryl fidgeted. His leg was gone to sleep beneath her weight. “You hear that?” He sat up straight.

“What?”

The distant wail of sirens. A few moments later, T-Dog heard them too. “Damn boy, you got some kind of bat-sonar?” He flashed his lights.

Three squad cars and an ambulance pulled up in front of them, tires screeching. Daryl braced himself for the party.

T-Dog opened his door to a tall, clean-cut officer wearing a Stetson.

“We got your call about-” the cop’s eyes widened. “Christ, that’s her!”

“ _Who_?” demanded T-Dog.

“She’s been missing for a week, that girl. She’s alive-”

Things happened quickly then. The EMTs came round and took her out of his arms, lifting her onto a stretcher. Her eyes, her good eye, that was, fluttered open. Everyone froze. “Go, Johnny go,” she said, and slipped out again. Daryl huddled into himself, watched the ambulance and first squad car drive away. He got out of the truck when a cop said to, put his bow and his knife and his game bag on the ground where they told him. His brother, he’d be pitching a fit by now, but Daryl knew when to keep his mouth shut.

Then T-Dog was revving up the truck – “see you at the station brother” – and following the second cop car back to town.

That left him, two cops, one car, and a coupla dead rabbits.

“Mr. Dixon.” That was the taller of the two cops, the one who had recognized the girl. He looked like a boy scout, all big blue eyes and smooth chin. Daryl glared at him. “You think you can lead us back to where you found her?”

Daryl shrugged.

“That a yes?”

“Told ya how I found her,” he said. “All tied up. Doubt whoever did that’s gonna be too happy ta see the law. Where’s your backup, officer?”

“I’ll worry about that,” said the cop, all confident. “We got the element of surprise now. Can you get us there?”

Daryl nodded. Reached for his crossbow.

“I gotta ask you to leave that here,” said the cop. “Accountability’n all.”

Fuming, Daryl let the other cop lock his weapons and his rabbits away in the squad car. He felt naked, vulnerable. Didn’t want to be stuck cowering behind these morons if shit went all OK Corral out in the woods.  

I shoulda left her where I found her.

His brother Merle had a song he liked, a song he’d turn up real loud on the radio when it came on. It went “I Fought the Law But the Law Won” but Merle always changed it to “I Fought the Law And I Won,” let that be a lesson to you little brother. Merle said the guy who sang it, Bobby Fuller, internally combusted after swallowing gasoline in the summer heat.

“I’m Deputy Rick Grimes,” said the boy scout, “King County Sheriff’s Department. Let’s head out.”

They threw up a ruckus behind him, the two cops, tromping through leaves and stepping on branches. Daryl gnawed his lip in frustration. The other one, not the boy scout, he was the worst, and not twenty paces from the road he upped and tripped on a fallen log. Dumbass went sprawling with a yelp of pain and Daryl wanted to kick the little bitch in the gut.

“Think I sprained it,” he was whimpering to Grimes.

“Can you make it back to the car?” Boy Scout asked. “Get back there and radio in for reinforcements.”

It was quiet again when the other cop was gone. “This is stupid, Sheriff,” Daryl said. “You got no idea what we might find out there.” He wasn’t a coward, he just picked his fights, and taking a bullet for the law wasn’t one of them.

But Grimes rounded on him, blue eyes blazing. “I know her!” he said fiercely. “Beth Greene, the girl. She looks after my children, and if you think I’m gonna let the sonuvabitch who blacked her eye and knocked out her teeth and Christ knows what else – I’ll go myself if you won’t.”

“An’ go crashin through the woods like an idiot?” Daryl found his trail and continued picking his way along it. The sun was out, that’s what was warming his cheeks, not some long-buried twinge of conscience. “You’re a sittin duck, Sheriff.”

“I’m not the Sheriff,” Grimes said from behind him. “I’m a deputy.”

Daryl rolled his eyes. The man was a damn pedant.

He led them deeper into the woods. Not something he’d ever confess to Grimes, but his skin was prickling. He had a bad feeling, couldn’t stop seeing the girl, Beth Greene, her gaping bloody mouth and swollen ankles. He’d had plenty done to him over the years, plenty of times he’d looked much worse than she did, but it sickened him, some sonuvabitch tying up a girl and leaving her in the woods like an animal. She musta been scared. He wondered why she’d been singing “Johnny B Goode.”

He flinched when Grimes put a hand on his shoulder. To his credit, the man withdrew it immediately. “We close?” he asked.

“Not far.” The enormous pines were closing in around them, blocking out the sunlight. Then Daryl had a thought and rounded on the cop. “How d’you know it aint me?” he demanded. “Aint me what did that to her?”

Grimes shrugged. “It’s obvious you didn’t.” Daryl raised a sardonic eyebrow that encompassed his filthy appearance, empty knife sheath, and bloodstained clothes. “And when I had headquarters run your name, one of the secretaries had seen you at the supermarket, same time as when Beth disappeared from the Greene farm.”

“Uh huh.” Daryl turned back to the trail. “You don’t know shit about me. Maybe I hate cops so goddam much I’d sooner leave you dead in the woods.”

Grimes just laughed, which pissed him off.

Then Daryl’s pulse began to pick up. “We’re real close,” he whispered, gesturing for Grimes to follow him. Carefully he zigzagged from tree to tree as the clearing came into view before them. Grimes settled behind a wide cedar, drawing his gun.

“This a stakeout?” Daryl whispered. “Thought you just wanted to see the hideaway.”

Grimes shrugged a little, his standard issue Glock loose in his hand. He had a second gun, some kind of revolver, still on his belt, and Daryl was tempted to ask for it.

Grimes was patient, Daryl had to give him that. He stayed still, he didn’t fidget. But he was still startled when Daryl tapped him on the shoulder and held a finger to his lips. Someone’s coming, he mouthed.

Hardly breathing, they watched a man emerge from the clearing opposite them. Daryl squinted at him. He coulda sworn the man looked familiar, something in the broad sloping shoulders and hawkish nose struck a chord with him. He shuddered.

The man approached the shack. He was halfway up the steps when Grimes leapt from behind his cover. “Freeze!” he ordered, his gun pointing at the man’s head. Daryl reached for his crossbow before remembering it wasn’t there. Cursing silently, he edged closer.

The man had a gun in his hand, an old-fashioned looking revolver, and Grimes was barking at him to get down on his knees and lay the weapon on the ground. He seemed to have it under control, the guy was dropping down to one knee and then the other. Daryl studied the man’s face. He knew he’d seen it before, the cruel eyes, the brutish mouth. And that must’ve been how he knew what was going to happen next, how he knew to throw himself at Grimes and knock him sideways, just as the man raised his gun and fired. He felt the bullet meant for the deputy graze his ribs, a burning trail of fire, and then he’d ripped the spare revolver from Grimes’s holster and leveled it.

He fired two shots. One in the forehead, one between the eyes. The assailant dropped like a sack of potatoes and Grimes was staring up at him like he’d lost his mind.

 


	2. The Right Bullets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading!

Daryl Dixon was sitting in an unlocked interrogation room, unlit cigarette in his mouth, a wadded up bandage pressed against the wound he hadn’t let anyone tend to.

Rick watched him from the one-way window of the observation room. Dixon kicked back from the table and began to pace to pace again. He looked out of his element under the harsh fluorescent lighting, smaller than he had out in the woods. His dark shaggy hair was matted to his brow with sweat, and he was streaked with blood, Beth Greene’s and his own.

Rick felt itchy in his skin. Maybe because he’d never owed a man his life before. Other men owed him theirs, but he’d been lucky. He didn’t have any debts, not until now anyway. He didn’t know much about Daryl Dixon. Merle Dixon, his older brother, had a record a mile long and was currently serving time in state for a botched robbery. The younger Dixon’s record was clean – well, mostly; there was a stack of unpaid parking tickets and hunting violations worth some $2000, but nothing to show he was anything like his brother.

Daryl Dixon hadn’t just saved his life. He’d damn near taken a bullet for him.

Rick went round to the interrogation room. He knocked, felt foolish, then strode into the room. Dixon stopped pacing at the sight of him. He had a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look about him.

“Can I get you anything?” Rick asked, nodding for Dixon to sit down.

“A light?” Dixon quipped, tucking his cigarette behind an ear.

“You should let one of our EMTs look at that. You’re bleeding through.”

“Aint nuthin but a scratch.”

Silence. Rick looking at Dixon. Dixon fidgeting in the chair, eyes downcast.

“Yer buddy already took my statement,” Dixon said at last. “Said they aint pressin charges.”

“Charges?” Rick raised his eyebrows.

“Fer takin an officer’s gun,” Dixon explained, the corner of his lip rising in a hint of a smirk. “Then he said I owed the state of Georgia two grand an’ told me to sit tight.”

“I’m sure we can work out a payment plan,” Rick said, wincing internally. _Payment plan_? The man had saved his life and he was talking about _payment plans_? He oughta pay the tickets off himself, but Lori hadn’t taken out life insurance and between Carl and the new baby, money was tight.

“Why’d you do that, back there?”

“Wasn’t thinkin.” Dixon’s narrow, startlingly blue eyes were guarded and hostile.

“I owe you my life.” The words tumbled out at last.

“Forget it.” The younger man shrugged.

Rick didn’t know what to say. It was nearly midnight, and Dixon had been at the station for hours. He knew he should tell him he was free to go, that he could pick up his weapons on his way out, but his throat had gone dry.

“She alright?” Again, it was Dixon who broke the silence with his gravelly voice. “The girl?”

“Beth’s okay.” Rick scrubbed at his face. “I mean, she’ll be okay. She’s got a concussion and a broken rib, and she’s gotta have major dental surgery, but yeah. She’ll recover. Her father and sister are with her at the hospital in Atlanta. They want to thank you in person.”

Dixon scoffed. “No need.” He bit at his thumbnail, apparently indifferent to the blood and dirt on his hands. “Was she…”

“Was she what?”

Dixon gestured vaguely, hair coming down over his eyes. “Raped?” he mumbled at last.

Rick felt cold and heavy again, the sickness that had been churning in his gut since the day Beth went missing flaring up again. Maybe if they’d found her sooner, maybe if they’d combed the woods instead of checking the towns, maybe if he had done his fucking job, little Beth Greene could have been spared. He sighed. “Yeah. I’m glad you killed him.”

Dixon spat on the floor. “Motherfucker deserved what he got,” he said savagely.

Shaking his head to clear it, Rick saw Dixon’s hands were balled into fists. The blue eyes were practically shooting sparks.

“You said you’d never seen that man before…” Rick began tentatively.

“That’s right,” Dixon said flatly. It was like a screen had come down behind his eyes; the blue irises darkened to an implacable grey. “Aint never seen him afore I shot him.”

Rick couldn’t think of anything more to say. He had no reason for holding Dixon any longer. The strange fascination the man exercised over him – well, it was normal, wasn’t it, since he had saved his life? Carl and the baby had nearly lost their second parent today. Dixon was right, it had been a stupid thing to do, staking out in the woods without backup. But he _had_ had backup, hadn’t he, when it mattered? Beth was safe. And the only person who died today deserved a thousand more deaths.

“You’re free to go,” he said at last. “You can pick up your weapons at the desk. And your um, your rabbits.”

“Right.” Dixon got to his feet in a smooth, graceful movement. He was like one of those big cats that Rick had taken Carl to see at the zoo, predatory and elegant at the same time.

“Thanks again.” Rick stuck out his hand and Dixon, after a moment’s hesitation, shook it briefly. Then he whipped around the door and was gone.

 

xxx

 

The substitute babysitter, Lydia, wasn’t as natural with the kids as Beth Greene. When Rick finally made it home at two in the morning, Carl was still awake and Judith was fussing in her crib. But after she left and he had Judith in his arms, he found himself smiling as he told Carl that Beth was home. Carl was nearly thirteen but he still cried a little at that.

 

xxx

 

A week later, Rick swung into the parking lot of Grady Memorial Hospital. He found a space next to a vintage looking Triumph chopper, which held his admiration until he spotted the double lightning bolt insignia on the tank. Sneering, Rick extricated a sleeping Judith from her car seat and strapped her into her carrier across his chest. He navigated the familiar corridors until he came to the recovery ward, where a nurse informed him that visiting hours began in ten minutes. He slouched into a chair. This was a social visit, Beth having already given her statement, and Carl wanted to come along, but Rick didn’t trust the sensitivity of his adolescent son. He’d brought Judith instead. Beth was devoted to Judith; she’d groggily asked about the baby moments after she’d come round at the hospital.

He bounced Judy idly. She had always been a quiet baby, almost too quiet, compared to Carl, who had screamed and squalled through his first two years of existence. At nine months Judith was like a little doll, as though keen to make up for the fact that her life came at the cost of her mother’s. Rick couldn’t hold it against her.

There was only one other person in the waiting room this morning. He stood facing away from Rick, a bouquet of flowers clasped behind his back. Rick noticed they weren’t store-bought flowers – they looked like fresh-picked wildflowers, a bit messy and untamed. They were lovely, much nicer than the generic roses Rick had sent over to Beth a few days ago.

The man leaned against the wall, now in profile to Rick, but it still took him a few moments to recognize the broad shoulders and tense posture. Daryl Dixon looked different cleaned up, closer to thirty than forty without the protective coating of dirt and blood Rick had come to associate with him.

“Hey!” he called. Dixon’s head snapped around. His eyes narrowed but he walked over, leaving a good five feet of distance between them.

“You here to see Beth?” Rick asked.

Dixon shrugged. He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it up at odd angles. He was staring at the baby dozing against Rick’s chest.

“This is my daughter Judith,” Rick explained. Dixon was still staring like he’d never seen a baby before. “Beth’s her nanny. I thought they might do each other good.”

Another awkward silence came between them. Dixon scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor.

“You can go back now!” the nurse called from her desk.

Dixon looked ready to bolt. He thrust the flowers at Rick, mumbling, “Reckon I’ll come back another time.”

Rick didn’t accept them. “Come in with me,” he said, getting to his feet. “The Greenes have been pestering me all week to meet you. The station secretary’s called you half a dozen times, but the line’s always disconnected.”

“It does that.” Dixon shrugged again.

“So c’mon.”

“You givin me an order, officer?” Dixon deadpanned, or at least Rick thought he was deadpanning. He couldn’t tell. The man’s face gave nothing away.

“You can call me Rick,” he said instead, because he’d decided then and there to call the other man Daryl. He led the way to Beth’s room, Daryl skulking behind him.

“JUDITH!” Beth exclaimed when he walked through the door. She was propped up in bed with a book, which she promptly flung to the side at the sight of her visitors. She reached out her arms for the baby, and Rick immediately unstrapped her and handed her over. Beth looked better than she had a few days ago, her eyes brighter and her cheeks pinker. Rick had been astonished by the girl’s resilience and flashes of good humor. He just hoped she wasn’t trying to keep face for her the sake of her loved ones.

But Beth was beaming as she cooed at Judith, so delighted at being reunited with her charge that she had failed to notice the man standing behind Rick.

“Beth,” he said, “there’s someone I want you to meet. This is Daryl Dixon.” He tugged the reluctant man forward.

Beth’s wide eyes opened wider. Shifting Judith to the crook of her arm, she extended her free hand to Daryl, who took it gently in his. Rick stepped back a few paces.

“Thank you,” she said, with openhearted sincerity. “You saved my life.” She hadn’t had her teeth fixed yet so she spoke with a slight lisp. Daryl looked over at Rick, who nodded encouragingly.

“Weren’t nuthin,” Daryl said, but his voice was low and soothing, much different from the defensive tone he took with Rick. “Heard ya singin, was all, heard ya singin ‘Johnny B Goode’ through the trees.”

“That man, he was always whistling it,” Beth said softly. “I never knew his name, so it’s what I called him in my head. Johnny B Goode.”

“He aint never comin back now,” Daryl told her firmly. “Johnny. He’s gone. You don’t have to worry bout him no more.”

“I know,” she said. “I don’t. Thanks to you.”

Rick wondered if he ought to step out. It was like a spell had come over the two of them, uniting them in some kind of understanding he wasn’t privy to. “He was a sick bastard,” Daryl was saying earnestly. “What he did, it don’t change who you are, ya know? He don’t mean nuthin.”

Beth nodded, her enormous blue eyes trained on Daryl’s. Rick felt a spasm of something like jealousy. He wished _he_ had been able to connect with the man as easily as Beth was doing. He still felt he hadn’t thanked him properly.

“And you saved Rick’s life, too!” Beth said. “If you hadn’t done what you did, Carl and Judy here would have lost their daddy too.”

Daryl’s head whipped around and he looked at Rick sharply. Rick looked away. “Daryl brought you flowers,” he said, clearing his throat.

“They’re beautiful,” Beth sighed.

“Picked em this morning,” Daryl said. “They grow round the property. Might still be bugs on em.”

Moving to the bedside table, Rick unceremoniously dumped the drooping roses he’d sent over into the trash, and replaced them with Daryl’s bouquet. They had a cheering effect on the synthetic hospital room.

Judith squirmed in Beth’s lap, kicking her plump little legs into the air. To Rick’s enormous surprise, Beth asked if Daryl wanted to hold her. Daryl hesitated, but moved closer to the bed and stuck his arms out stiffly. “She’s just a baby,” Beth said. “She won’t bite.”

Judith looked especially small cradled in Daryl’s muscular arms. Giggling, she grabbed for the long forelock that swept across his cheek. Rick found he was oddly comfortable with the man holding his daughter. Daryl showed her the same gentle demeanor he displayed with Beth. Inclining his head towards the baby, he tossed his bangs to and fro, and Judith shrieked with laughter as she pulled at his hair. “She’s a little asskicker, aint she?” he said, and his crooked smile was the first he’d ever shown Rick.

Then Beth’s father Hershel bustled through the door. He kissed his daughter, smoothing her hair, and then his sharp eyes landed on Daryl.

“Hershel, this is Daryl Dixon,” Rick said, unnecessarily. “Daryl, this is Beth’s father, Dr. Hershel Greene.”

“I’d like to have a word with you alone, son,” Hershel said. Looking nervous, Daryl walked over to Rick. He stood very close to hand Judith back to him, and when their hands touched Rick felt his stomach drop, like he was on an elevator that had risen too quickly. Daryl froze but he didn’t jerk away, instead making sure the baby had safely transferred arms. Then, looking like he was headed to the chopping block, he followed Hershel out into the hall.

“Daddy wants to thank him,” Beth explained, leaning back into her pillows. “You know, man to man.”

Rick sat in the chair next to the bed. “He took to you,” he said. “Daryl, I mean. Down at the station, getting him to talk was like pulling teeth.” He winced at his choice of metaphor, but Beth flashed him a sunny, and toothless, smile to show she didn’t mind. “He saved my life, too, but I don’t think he likes me much.” He was trying not to listen to the murmured voices in the hall.

“You make him nervous, probably,” Beth said. “Being a cop and all. Daddy says his brother’s in jail.”

“Maybe.” Rick liked to think that he was personable, despite his badge and gun, but Dixon clearly felt otherwise.

“How’s Carl?”

“Still in love with you,” Rick answered, disloyally. Beth giggled. “He’s always after me, saying he’s too old for a babysitter, but all week it’s been, ‘when’s Beth coming back?’, nonstop. We’ve been lucky to have you,” he added more somberly. “I don’t know how I would’ve managed, after Lori.”

“Well, I think Judy’s made a new friend,” Beth said, jerking her head at the door. “Maybe you should ask him to sub in for me.”

“He doesn’t seem like the domestic type-” Rick was saying, when the inaudible conversation outside suddenly increased in volume.

“I’m tellin ya, that ain’t necessary!” he heard Daryl say, and then the door banged open, Hershel towing Daryl into the room. Daryl’s cheeks were flushed scarlet.

“Rick, talk some sense into this man!” Hershel exclaimed. “I heard you boys were fining him a whole bushel of money, and I figure it’s the least I can do, taking care of it.”

“I don’t need no one’s charity,” Daryl said flatly.

“That’s mighty decent of you, Hershel,” Rick cut in. “Don’t be an ass, Daryl. Let the man thank you.” His tone was jocular, familiar, and Daryl shot him a wary look.

“Consider it done,” Hershel said, with such finality that Daryl closed his mouth, even though he was still glowering. Hershel turned his attention to Judith, scrutinizing her closely as she sat alert in Rick’s arms. “She’s looking well. The jaundice has cleared up, then?”

“She’s not one of your calves, daddy,” Beth said from the bed, yawning.

Rick took that at his cue. He bent down and kissed Beth, quickly excusing himself and Daryl. Beth’s eyes were already closing as he shut the door quietly behind them.

“They’re a good family, the Greenes,” he said, as they drifted down the corridor together. “Real salt of the earth types.”

Daryl grunted.

They were still walking together, awkwardly anticipating the moment when their paths would separate. Rick wasn’t sure if he was following Daryl or Daryl was following him as they continued to the car park.

“Well,” said Daryl.

“I’m headed this way, too,” said Rick.

They wandered down the rows of cars, coming to a halt simultaneously. Rick in front of his Honda. Daryl in front of the Triumph bike Rick had noticed earlier. He felt a stab of – _something,_ disappointment maybe, as his eyes flicked between Daryl and the ugly insignia on the tank.

To his surprise, Daryl blushed. “Aint mine,” he volunteered. “The bike, s’my brother Merle’s. I’m jus’ borrowin it while he’s in the can, aint had the chance to give it a new coat of paint yet.”

Relieved, Rick was about to give voice to the idea he’d been toying with since they left the hospital, but again Daryl spoke first. “What happened to your wife?” he said abruptly.

“She died.” The words still sounded odd to his ears, all these months later. But he’d never been one for comforting death euphemisms. Lori hadn’t passed away. She died. She was dead. No heavenly choirs, alleluia, alleluia. “Giving birth to Judith,” he clarified.

“Sorry,” Daryl said after a moment. His face was expressionless. Rick wondered what he might have lost, or who, to make death so routine and unremarkable to him.

“You want to…” His voice was squeaky. He cleared his throat. “You want to grab a beer sometime, maybe tomorrow night?”

Daryl narrowed his eyes. Instantly hostile again. “Aintcha on duty, Sheriff?”

“Not after eight.” Rick could feel his cheeks turning pink. It wasn’t like he was asking the man out on a damn date, he told himself. He’d just grown unused to socializing after Lori. And maybe he _was_ being unprofessional, taking up with the principal witness of the case. He was gearing up to apologize and retract the offer, but then Daryl shrugged. Nodded his head once.


	3. Moonshiner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are enjoying! Thank you so much for reading.

He didn’t know why, but he dreamt of Merle that night.

He’d learnt not to dwell, knew better than to think back on the past, but sleeping, he was weak. Things snuck back unbidden.

 

xxx

 

“It’s the easiest thing in the world, little brother.”

Merle slung an arm round him, propelling them forward. He matched his brother’s loping stride. Could feel Merle looking at him but knew better than to look back. “You put your dick in her pussy and that’s all there is to it. Think you can do that, little brother?”

He grunted.

“Well, can you? Or else-” Merle smacked his crotch, Daryl slapped his hand away – “you got another pussy in there, Darlena? Cos that’s all you got if your dick don’t work right. Tell me you aint a pussy.”

He moved to hit his groin again, but this time Daryl was too quick for him. He dodged to the side. “I aint no pussy,” he told Merle.

“That’s right, baby brother. You stick it in her then you’re a man.” Merle clamped his arm round Daryl again. “See I had my doubts about you, seems like fifteen’s a grand ol age to hit without gettin no pussy. Started to wonder if you were like one of them fruitcakes paradin round town with their dicks tied together. But Merle’s gonna take care of you. Merle’s gonna give you the time of your life.”

Merle didn’t seem to expect an answer this time, so Daryl let himself be pulled along in silence. He knew where they were going, of course. His brother went there most Friday nights, if he wasn’t in jail. He’d even picked Merle up there, when his brother had got too drunk or too high or too rough and the whores had thrown him out on his ass. He’d pull up his brother’s pants and dump him in the back of the truck, drive him home before Merle realized where he was.

It was a shitty whorehouse, not like the ones in the movies. Just a motel, really, with a different girl behind each door. Daryl hung back while Merle pounded on the door to Number Eleven. He was buzzed but not drunk, just a couple beers on an empty stomach.

The door opened but Daryl couldn’t see who was behind it, his brother’s burly frame blocked the doorway.

“Personal favor,” Merle was saying. “Get my baby brother’s dick wet.”

“How old is he?” the unseen woman demanded.

“He’s fifteen, beautiful age, I tell ya.”

“Aw, Merle,” the woman said.

“He’ll beg for it if I ask him to. Want me to make him beg?”

“You got any drugs?” she asked. 

“I might.”  
  
"Crystal?"

"Maybe." 

“Show me.”

Merle put his hand in his pocket and pulled something out of it.

“Fine.”

Merle stepped back and pulled Daryl forward. “Monica, this is my baby brother Daryl. Daryl, this is the lady who’s gonna make you a man.”

Monica was in her thirties, with brassy red hair from a bottle. She had nails long like talons, painted blood red. Looked like a fearsome bird of prey, she did.

“C’mon in, Daryl,” she drawled. Merle shoved him forward into the dimly lit room, darker than it was outside under the stars. She had one of those lava lamps, pulsing pink and orange. Daryl stood stupidly in the center of the room. He heard the door close and turned round. Merle was settling in to a sagging armchair.

“You stayin?” he said uncertainly.

“Course I am.” Merle favored him with a broad grin. “Don’t count less I’m here to see it. Eyewitness. You go on now.”

Monica was sitting on the bed. She sized Daryl up, her eyes indifferent, and patted the space next to her.

“You go on now,” Merle said.

Daryl crossed the few steps to the bed and sat down next to her. He shoulda gotten drunker. He shoulda asked for the cocaine. Cos he wasn’t feeling the slightest bit of anything close to arousal and he was gonna fuck this up in front of Merle, who’d call him a pussy or a fucking faggot for the rest of his life if he couldn’t get it done.

Monica wasn’t doing anything, just regarding him without much interest.

“Do you… am I s’posed to kiss ya or something?” Daryl said at last. He heard Merle guffaw.

“No kid, you don’t have kiss me,” Monica said. She pulled down the straps of her slip and her breasts, large and terrifying, sprang into view. Daryl stared at them. “Them tits aint real, little brother,” he could hear Merle saying, but all he could do was gape and wonder what he was supposed to do with them.

Monica sighed noisily. She grabbed his hands and placed them on her breasts, forcing him to squeeze them. Daryl didn’t like the way they felt under his hands, cold and unyielding. He let go as soon as Monica let him. She unzipped his jeans and slid her hand inside. He wasn’t hard. She began to pump him, her hand rough and dry against his skin. Daryl could hear Merle laughing. _Pussy._ He squeezed his eyes shut and cast his mind about for something, anything… He remembered one of Merle’s pornos, the one where it was two girls. There weren’t any whips or huge cocks, and he’d liked watching them go down on each other. It worked, finally. His dick, stupid thing, did what it was supposed to do and got hard. Monica didn’t waste any time, thankfully. She mounted him and did most of the work, moving up and down. Daryl kept his eyes shut. Whenever he moved, her tits collided with his head, and he found it was best to keep still.

In the end, the discomfort of it made him lose focus on the two girls licking each other’s pussies and he went soft. But he screwed up his face anyway and groaned like he’d come hard. He opened his eyes just in time to see Merle, furiously jerking off with a glazed expression on his face, come all over Monica’s armchair.

Monica got off him. “There you go, kid,” she said, adjusting her slip. “All grown up now.” Daryl zipped his jeans as Merle, across the room, did the same. When Merle walked over to him, there were tears in his eyes. “Knew you could do it, little brother. Knew you weren’t no pussy.” Daryl let Merle hug him tightly.

“Go on home now,” Merle said. “Me and Monica got stuff to talk about.”

The drugs were back out but Daryl didn’t care anymore. He began the walk back home in the dark. He was nearly there when he had to double over and puke violently. Nothing but beer came up but his stomach heaved painfully for another minute or two. He wanted to cry. Least he wouldn’t have to thank Merle til morning.

 

xxx

 

He was clammy, sweating. Whenever that moment revisited him, the humiliation and revulsion was so strong he wanted to get in the shower and scrub his body raw. Half asleep, he kicked off his damp sheets and stumbled naked into the bathroom. Turned on the spray. He woulda liked to give himself a good scalding but the water was icy. He could settle for that, a freezing out. After, he wrapped himself in a quilt to wait it out, but the night wasn’t done with him yet.

 

xxx

 

Before he lit off for good, Merle took him back there, to the whorehouse, a couple more times. But he didn’t try to watch again. Usually Daryl paid the girls to keep their mouths shut that he never so much as touched them. There was one girl he sort of liked, Marine she said her name was. She was so skinny her bones jutted out and she had track marks on her arms, but she had the sweetest Georgia drawl and hair like cornsilk. Not much older’n him. She was the first one he ever came inside of and she never tried to take his shirt off. He kissed her deep and rolled on top of her and loved her again. One day he went to see her by himself and a different girl told him she was dead, overdosed two days ago.

 

xxx

 

He was a sight the next morning, eyes bloodshot and shadowed, slouched into a chair, drinking brew for breakfast. _Can’t fail._

He didn’t give a damn what Rick Grimes thought, of course, but he wasn’t gonna go round letting people think he was some goddam Nazi. Merle could holler all he liked when he got out.

He went round to the shed and found a can of black paint. Under the pale morning sunlight he crouched down next to the Triumph with a cigarette between his lips and dabbed away at the lightning bolts. Then he went ahead and painted the whole tank to even out the color.

Next he tended to his weapons. He cast an eagle eye over the crossbow, determined to find evidence that the cops had mishandled it, but there wasn’t even a scratch. He counted his arrows, none missing, but his hands needed to stay busy so he lifted down a shotgun, muzzle sawed off short, and started oiling it.

He’d never killed a man before.

Thought about it of course, hundreds of times. Thousands. Never gone through with it, though. Neither had Merle, actually, though he ran with men who had.

Once Merle had passed him a joint laced with PCP. That’s what it felt like, shooting this man in the head. A fucken rush.

He laid out his collection of knives on a stump. Then, with lethal accuracy, he threw them one by one into a tree across the yard. Merle mighta been a loose canon, but Daryl was deadly. He’d made sure of that.

Why the fuck had Rick Grimes offered him a drink? Boy Scout wasn’t even the first – T-Dog had tracked him down too, taken him for a burger somewhere in Atlanta. One week and two men wanted to be his buddy. He’d never had anything like it. Oh, he knew what Merle would say when he got out, Merle would give him an earful about the kind of people he was keeping company with these days, pig cops and blacks – and that was him swapping out the language Merle woulda used, cos he couldn’t think those words in the privacy of his own head without a twinge of disgust.

T-Dog he liked. Stupid name aside, the man was friendly, direct, and said whatever the hell was on his mind. They didn’t have shit in common but T-Dog was a good talker, and Daryl liked listening to people who had something worth saying.

Grimes, though, Grimes was another story. He couldn’t get a read on the cop. He had too many sides to him that didn’t add up. Cleancut lawman with his stupid badge and Stetson. Gunslinging madman who pulled on Johnny B Goode in the woods. Then the guy who turned up at the hospital yesterday with his kid strapped to his chest and his dead wife heavy in the air. It didn’t fucking compute.

He’d still said yes.

Curiosity, maybe. In too deep. Beth Greene tugged at the core of him. Blue eyes and golden hair almost like the junkie whore he’d fucked as a kid, but wholesome as buttermilk. It weren’t too late for her, it weren’t over, he wanted to be sure she knew that. Still had a chance to come back. Her and her vet daddy who’d writ him a check for $2000 that he’d immediately signed over to Grimes, and that could have been the end of it, debts paid nobody owing nobody nothing.

They couldn’t leave well enough alone, none of them.

Getting drunk off moonshine, before the sun was high in the sky. That was shit for his old man, long dead rot in hell, and Merle. But Merle never killed a man.

The wound on his side still ached, where he’d taken the bullet meant for Rick Grimes.

He arranged some empty beer bottles in a semi-circle. Then he took up the shotgun and blasted away. Shattered em all on the first shot. Still wasn’t good enough. A flash of movement through the trees. He fired without thinking, then went to collect the limp rabbit, feeling disgusted. He never killed what he didn’t need, it wasn’t no goddam sport. He hadn’t eaten much in the past week, always feeling sick when he tried. Like some stupid bitch with morning sickness.

Judith Grimes was the first baby he’d ever held. People didn’t make a habit of handing him their babies, not with him looking the way he did. They were more like to cross the street to avoid him.

But Beth had passed him the kid as if it was nothing, and Rick Grimes hadn’t done anything to stop it. He’d expected her to start squalling the second he took her up, but instead she’d beamed at him and gone right for his damn hair. He’d been sorry, almost, to hand her back.

Come afternoon, he was sure Rick Grimes had some other agenda going with this drink proposition. Maybe Grimes thought he had something on him. Maybe it was a setup. Maybe the cops were gonna have a laugh at his expense. Merle never woulda agreed to it, or he woulda rolled in six-deep with his own gang, ready to give as good as he got. But Daryl didn’t have a gang, never had. It’d only ever been him and Merle, as far as he remembered.

He wondered if Beth Greene had gone home from the hospital yet. He hoped he wouldn’t try to kill herself like

He hoped she’d be fine, go back to her daddy’s farm, go back to college, go back to her sugar-an’-spice-an’-everything-nice life from before.

He was out of bottles to shoot at, so he drank a few more in the name of target practice. It took him a little longer to aim this time, but he still hit each one on the first shot.

 

xxx

 

When he was younger, him and Merle used to pull this stunt back at bars, like a William Tell act. Merle would get men to bet him that Daryl couldn’t shoot something off the top of his head, an apple or a shotglass or in one case somebody’s unfortunate pet rat. Daryl was thin, scrawny, not much to look at, and the punters expected to see a man’s head blowed off or a chance to swipe his cash. And so he’d take it up, a pistol or a rifle or a crossbow, and pretend to squint at his target, so’s to draw out the suspense. Then he’d hit whatever was perched on Merle’s head with a single neat shot, and they’d collect all their winnings. This being, of course, one of the more respectable ways they used to pull in some odd cash.

 

xxx

 

Come evening, he was well-oiled and hating Rick Grimes. He washed and put on a clean shirt, but only so’s not to hand them – somewhere along the way, Rick Grimes had multiplied into a ‘them’ – easy ammunition. He knew he was over the limit, but he got off on the idea of driving a little bit drunk to meet a cop. Besides, he’d be on the bike – if he got into a smash-up, he’d be the only one who’d die, probably. That was something he could live with.

He sped down the winding county road towards town, the wind blowing through his hair.

The bar – called the Pour House, fittingly enough – was enough of a shithole that him and Merle had been there a couple times themselves. Daryl parked the Triumph in the lot and had a cigarette, then another. He was still early, but fuck it, he might as well get started before Grimes turned up. He was a heavyweight champion; it would take a helluva lot more booze before he lost his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully it goes without saying that Merle's choice of words is something that I do not personally endorse. (Quite the opposite.) But Merle will be Merle.


	4. Sandinista!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the reads, comments, kudos. You guys are lovely.

Looking back, Rick realized he should’ve known something was wrong the second he walked in there, but he’d been paying attention to all the wrong things.

First, even though he was exhausted from work and the strain of keeping his household afloat, he’d lost a full night’s sleep. Thinking, mostly, about Daryl Dixon. The man was an enigma inside a riddle wrapped around a whatever the hell it was Winston Churchill had said.

In his line of work, he’d grown skilled at profiling people. All it took was a glance, a word, and he could compile a comprehensive dossier on anyone he met. Guilty, innocent. Friend, foe. He was seldom wrong. But charged with the breakdown of Daryl Dixon, he didn’t know where to begin. The man contained myriads, it seemed. The sullen, uncooperative witness his brothers at the station had been quick to label redneck trash. The man who’d saved his life and put two bullets in the kidnapper, one to the forehead and one between the eyes. And then yesterday, someone else entirely had brought Beth Greene wildflowers and held his tiny daughter in his arms like she was some kind of miracle. Which, he supposed, she was.

Second, he’d had a hell of a time leaving the house. Lydia was back to look after Carl and Judith, and she’d made her pass at him even more blatant than usual. He’d blushed and stammered and made an ass out of himself, because she was the last person he wanted in his bed, he didn’t want _anyone_ in his bed, Lori had only been gone nine months, have some fucking decency.

Carl had barely reacted when he said he was going out for a bit. Judith had screwed up her face and howled when she was transferred to Lydia’s arms.

After he’d gotten in the Honda and pulled out of his driveway, he had rested his face against the steering wheel, trying to pull himself together. Something had to give in the stilted atmosphere of grief that still pervaded his home. The first fissures had appeared when Beth was recovered, but already Carl was starting to close off again, trying to conceal how much he cared. Rick wanted to cling to that shred of hope, the promise that not everything need end in death and loss, for as long as possible. And beneath that, pounding like a deep, steady pulse, was the thought of Daryl Dixon.

Rick was surprised to see Daryl’s chopper already there when he pulled into the lot behind the Pour House. He’d half expected him to be late, or – a prospect that had twisted at his guts all afternoon at the station – not show at all.

He noticed the tank had a fresh coat of paint. The SS insignia was gone. He smiled.

Eight o’clock and the place was packed. Rick exchanged nods and smiles as he wove his way through the crowd, looking for Daryl. Not at the bar, not huddled behind some corner table, glowering at anyone who came near. Rick had worked his way to the back of the bar when he spotted him from behind, slim body bent over the pool table, poised mid-shot. He sank it neatly into the corner pocket. Rick felt a flush of annoyance that Daryl already looked so at home here, surrounded by a group of hard-looking men he seemed to be on some kind of terms with.

Daryl turned and Rick did a double take. Dixon looked very odd indeed, wearing a red and black bandana bearing the letters FSLN tied over his nose and mouth. His sharp blue eyes landed on Rick and he barreled towards him, seizing his arm in a less than friendly grip.

“That’s Pepe,” Daryl growled, his voice muffled through the cloth. He jerked his head at one of his pool table associates, a fearsome looking man missing an eye with a long scar bisecting his cheek. “He was a Sandinista in Nicaragua.”

“Are you asking me to arrest him?” Rick was unsure what to do with this information.

“Nah. But I won his rag offa him, and he’s out for blood now.”

Rick felt thoroughly disoriented. He had planned to get to know Dixon better, scratch the curious itch that had been distracting him all week, draw the reticent man out a bit. But here was Daryl dressed like a mountain guerrilla, in command of a situation that Rick couldn’t begin to understand.

He was pissed.

“How bout I buy you that beer?” he said, beginning to jostle Daryl away from the strange crowd at the pool table. Daryl shrugged and let himself be jostled. At the bar Rick elbowed his way through the old-timers to buy two glasses of whatever was on tap. He handed one to Daryl, who took it without so much as a nod of thanks, and announced he was stepping out for a cigarette. Steaming, Rick followed.

Outside, Daryl was trying to drink his beer through the bandana. Rick jerked it down for him. Daryl drained half the glass in a single gulp and slid his back down the wall until he was cross-legged on the ground. Rick began to wonder if he was drunk, and awkwardly lowered himself into a sitting position as well so he wouldn’t be staring down at the other man.

Daryl lit a cigarette and exhaled a perfect smoke ring. “I can be a dick,” he said unexpectedly.

Rick wasn’t about to disagree.

“That was some of Merle’s old crew back there,” he went on. “Tough guys. Pepe he met back in prison.”

“What’s F-S-L-N?”

“Means Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional,” said Daryl.

“You speak Spanish?” Rick said, impressed.

“Picked up bits here and there.” Daryl fingered the hole fraying the knee of his black jeans. “Sorry bout that. Didn’ expect to run into them tonight.”

“No problem.” (He almost meant it.)

Daryl tipped his head back against the wall. Rick glanced at the elegant line of his throat, feeling an inexplicable impulse to trace the man’s profile with his forefinger. He blushed, even though there was no way Daryl could have possibly known what he was thinking.

“How’s Beth?” Daryl asked, his eyes closed.

“She went home today.” Rick was glad for the distraction. “They’re going to start her dental work next week.”

“Right. ‘N how’s your little un?”

“Judy’s fine. She’s a quiet baby, but she put up an awful fuss when I left tonight. Wish I’d had Beth to calm her down. Or you,” he added as an afterthought.

“You got a boy too.”

“Carl. Almost thirteen now. It’s been hard on him, all of it. Losing his mother, new sister. Wish I didn’t have to work such long hours at the station, but I’ve had to compensate without Lori’s income.” He was really running his mouth to this taciturn almost-stranger. He never talked about his shattered family these days, reassuring strangers and friends (nearly all former friends at this point) alike that they were doing fine, that he had everything under control. But he was talking openly to Daryl now. “I’m doing my best with Carl, trying to get him out of the house, but he’s either shut up in his room reading comic books, or he’s playing videogames.” Saying it aloud, Christ it made him feel so tired.

“My momma died when I was nine,” Daryl said. “You should get your boy outside, that’s what kept me outta trouble.”

Rick didn’t know what to say.

“I could teach him,” Daryl said, his voice carefully neutral. “How to track, hunt, whatever.”

“Would you?” the words burst out of Rick in a rush of gratitude. He hadn’t realized how desperate he was until Daryl offered help in his offhand way, and it almost unmanned him. He blinked rapidly.

“Sure.” Daryl flicked away his cigarette butt.

“I could pay you-” Rick knew it was a colossal misstep as soon as the words had left his mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t – I just meant-” he backtracked foolishly.

“Don’t fucken ruin it, Sheriff,” Daryl said with a bark of laughter. “Just cos you corner me into takin charity from ol’ Hershel, don’t mean I’m fucken destitute. Or illiterate,” he added, as an afterthought.

“I don’t think you’re either of those things,” Rick told him.

Daryl stretched his legs out in front of him. “Well Grimes, ready to get drunk together?”

“Aren’t you already drunk?”

Daryl ignored Rick’s proffered hand and rose to his feet with enviable ease. “Nuthin worth radioing your buddies about.”

Walking back into the Pour House, they were able to take seats at the bar. Knowing he would be driving home, Rick stuck to beer while Daryl lined up a shot of whiskey. Oiled up, Daryl was, if not exactly chatty, a willing conversationalist, though he was quick to steer any topic away from himself and back to Rick. Nevertheless, Rick was able to glean that there seemed to be no one particular in his life besides Merle.

“’Cept now I done and landed me two damn interfering friends,” said Daryl. “First T, now you.”

Rick was careful to keep his face blank, but internally he was thrilled that Daryl had called them friends. It was, if he was being honest with himself, more than he had dared hope for, though he had certainly hoped for it nonetheless.

“Four, actually,” he said.

“How d’you figure?” said Daryl.

“Well, you got Judith, if you’re willing to count a nine-month-old as a friend. And you got Beth.”

“Beth.” Daryl repeated, frowning a little.

“Yeah. The whole Greene clan, they’d adopt you into the family in a heartbeat.”

Suddenly Daryl’s whole face closed off, his eyes going flat and dull. “Don’t need no other family,” he said, swiping a bit of foam from his upper lip. Rick was mesmerized by the offhand gesture. Daryl had thin mobile lips, quick to twist into a scowl or harden into a flat line, less prone to smile, just a slight upward quirk on the left side to register amusement. Rick had only seen one real smile, back at the hospital when he was holding Judith.

Rick tore his eyes away from Daryl’s mouth, suddenly aware he had been staring. He looked up and saw Daryl regarding him quizzically, one eyebrow raised. “I got somethin on my face, Sheriff?” he demanded.

“No, just…” Rick cast about, feeling like a schoolboy caught ogling a girl’s cleavage. “You got an unusual mark there, sorta like a beauty spot.”

Daryl’s fingers went to the tiny mole just above the right corner of his lip. “A _beauty spot_?” he repeated incredulously. “What is this, fucken _Versailles_?”

“You could use a shave, too,” Rick blundered ahead, hoping if he dug himself even deeper it might look intentional.

“Fucken hell, maybe it’s a good thing I won this,” Daryl said, yanking the Sandinista bandana back up over his nose. “You want me to start on you, Officer Krupke?”

“I’m a widower!” Rick protested. “You aint allowed!” It was the first joke he’d ever made at the expense of his bereavement, and it was worth it when Daryl tugged the bandana down around his neck.

“So you gonna pull that card,” he said, elbowing Rick lightly.

“Only one I got left to play.”

Their knees were touching under the bar; every time one of them moved, their shoulders brushed. Imperceptibly Rick leaned into the contact, and it was only feeling the reassuring warmth of Daryl beside him Rick realized how much he’d been shunning proximity in recent months. 

At one point the man called Pepe came over and rapped Daryl sharply on the back.

“Dámelo,” he said, indicating the bandana.

“Lo gané,” Daryl said, unfazed.

“¡Ahora! O entonces yo lo agarraré, putito.”

“Chinga tu madre,” Daryl said, and even Rick got the gist of that as Pepe’s single eye narrowed dangerously.

“Daryl-” he began, putting a cautionary hand on his shoulder.

Pepe spat at Daryl’s feet. “Pendejo,” he said, striding towards the door. Then he paused. “Vete al carajo, maricón.”

Things happened quickly, and even later Rick was never entirely certain what had taken place. But all of a sudden Daryl was out of his chair like a flash and darting after Pepe. He hesitated only a second before following.

Out front, he shouted in alarm to see Daryl take a vicious fist to the eye. But he needn’t have worried; Daryl feinted right and then landed a blow to Pepe’s temple. The man dropped, howling. Rick seized the moment to bundle Daryl away, practically dragging him round the building to the parking lot.

“The fuck, Rick?” Daryl grumbled. “Had everything under control.” He slid to the ground next to his motorcycle, his left eye already beginning to swell shut.

“What did that man say?” Rick demanded, nudging Daryl’s boot with his toe.

“He called me…” Daryl slid down a few more inches. “Aint important.”

“So why’d you go after him like that?”

“My honor?” said Daryl, unconvincingly.

“Like you give a damn. Jesus Christ. You should get that looked at.” He indicated the eye.

“Hell no. A side of meat from the freezer’ll do me.” He was practically lying flat on the ground.

“You’re drunk as fuck!” Rick accused.

“Too drunk too fuck,” Daryl confirmed.

The night air seemed warmer all of a sudden. Rick was blushing, probably for the umpteenth time that evening. Christ, he had to get ahold of himself. “C’mon back with me,” he said. “You can’t drive, and I’ll have a look at that eye.”

“Aint leavin my bike,” Daryl said mulishly.

“We’ll come back for it,” Rick said. “In the morning.”

“Pajama party, is it?” Daryl growled. “Be fine here, Sheriff. Sober up a bit, then drive her home.”

“Not a chance,” Rick said. “I’m a cop, remember?”

“Christ, you really are gonna arrest me, aintcha?”

“That’s right,” Rick said. He bent down and seized Daryl by the elbows. The man seemed dazed, because he allowed himself to be raised and towed into the front seat of the Honda. Rick even buckled his seatbelt for him, like he used to do for Carl.

Rick didn’t stop to think what it would look like when he came home with a drunk Daryl Dixon, how Carl might react. Lydia, too, she was the biggest gossip on this side of King County.

True to form, Lydia eyed Daryl hungrily as Rick half dragged, half carried him through the door. At least Carl had already gone to bed, a blessing. He sent her on her way as quickly as possible.

Daryl sank into the couch without protest. He hardly seemed aware of his surroundings.

Rick didn’t have a side of meat in his freezer, but he did have a bag of frozen peas. Thus armed, he returned to the living room and sat beside Daryl. Gently he pressed the peas against his black eye; Daryl hardly flinched from the cold.

Rick combed the sweaty fringe off Daryl’s forehead. He wouldn’t think about what he was doing. Couldn’t. His heart was hammering in his ribs. The word for what he was feeling suddenly flashed through his head, and he shoved it down violently.

It started by accident, before Rick even realized what he was doing. He brushed his fingers over Daryl’s high, prominent cheekbones and ran his forefinger down his throat, just like he’d imagined doing outside the bar. Some of Daryl’s shirt buttons had come undone, and the pale skin of his sternum seemed to glow in the lamplight.

Rick wrenched himself away. Wrong, it was so wrong. Everything he was doing, it was despicable. Maybe he himself was drunker than he’d thought.

He bent to unlace Daryl’s boots, pulling them off him. Then he worked the leather jacket off his shoulders, folding it neatly and placing it on the floor beside the boots. When he lifted up the bag of peas, some of the swelling had gone down, but Daryl would still have a giant purple shiner in the morning.

“Time to sleep,” he said, though it looked like Daryl was already dead to the world. Rick stretched him out horizontally on the sofa and placed a pillow behind his head. Enough. Now it was time to go back to his own room and sleep off whatever madness had gotten into him tonight. But he permitted himself a final touch, grazing his fingertips across Daryl’s cheek.

And that’s when Daryl’s eyes opened, blinking sleepily up at him. “Ya aint about ta try an’ fuck me, are ya?” he murmured, and his eyes fluttered shut again.

 

xxx

 

Rick checked on Judith first. She was slumbering peacefully in her crib, clutching her teddy bear. He bent over and kissed her forehead, softly so as not to wake her. Next door, Carl was sound asleep too, all the sheets kicked down to the foot of the bed. Rick listened to his son’s quiet snores for a moment, then closed the door gently behind him.

Now he had nothing to do but retreat to his own bedroom.

_Lust_ was the word that had snuck into his brain. Or its glossier counterpart, desire. Since high school, he had never been anything but in love with Lori, and then married to Lori, till death do us part. His eye had never roamed in anything more than abstract appreciation; there was simply no one for him but Lori. Now, it wasn’t so much the concept of desiringanother man that shocked him. It was the idea of desiring anyone at all.

_Ya aint about ta try an’ fuck me, are ya?_

The slurred question had made him cold, even as it sent all his blood rushing south. What did it mean? Was Daryl saying he knew that Rick wanted him? He hadn’t sounded defensive or angry, like he would have punched Rick’s lights out if he could, but it had hardly been an invitation. No, Rick decided, his tone had been more one of defeat and resignation.

Had Daryl previously looked up into another man’s face and known what was coming, whether he’d wanted it or not? The thought perturbed Rick, far more than the idle jealousy he’d been entertaining that Daryl might have feelings for Beth Greene, with the way they were carrying on in the hospital room. No, this was much worse, and it disgusted Rick that he might represent some appalling pattern for Daryl.

But Christ, he couldn’t unsee Daryl stretched out on the sofa like that.

Daryl must have been pretty when he was young, before whatever run-in had broken his nose and brought a faint asymmetry to his features. Older, more rugged and worn down, he was still a strikingly handsome man, with his astonishing eyes and sharp cheekbones. Broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hips, his body taut and muscular from years of doing whatever it was he did – hunting, lifting, carrying, Rick had no idea, but he admired him without envy.

He realized he had something balled up in his fist. It was Daryl’s stupid guerrilla handkerchief, won with a black eye back at the bar. Hardly realizing what he was doing, Rick raised the cloth to his nose and inhaled Daryl’s particular scent of woodsmoke and tobacco.

Fuck, he was hard in his pants. He wanted the man asleep on the couch awake in his bed, pinning him to the mattress with his powerful body and biting his neck with those strong, canine teeth.

He wouldn’t give into it. He wouldn’t. Rick sat on the side of the bed, digging his fingers into his thighs and trying to ride it out.


	5. Temporary Like Achilles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due warning: this is a bit of a dark one, but hopefully it will answer some of your questions. Bear with me, the whole thing is plotted out over the next 5-7 chapters in a way that hopefully treats the characters with fairness and sensitivity. There is, I promise, at least a little method to the madness.
> 
> Thank you again for reading!

He would forgive Merle anything, but once Merle went too far.

It all started with a drug deal gone bad. Merle had bought some meth on credit, but when the creditors – _dealers_ – came calling, he was still skint, the crystal long disappeared up his nose. Waiting outside the cheap motel room, Daryl was prepared to throw himself into the fray if shit got ugly. But the three men had just left quietly, their leader casting a cool gaze over Daryl as he passed him.

Inside, Merle was already toasting himself with a bottle of Jack, telling Daryl he had intimidated them sorry sonsabitches so bad they’d never come botherin him again. Daryl shrugged. He didn’t go out with Merle that night. These dirty old towns and their dirty old bars were all the same. If he had any luck, Merle would forget which motel they were staying at and have to take his catch of the night somewhere else.

He musta been around twenty then, he’d spent the past couple years drifting round the county with Merle.

He laid back on the saggy old mattress, not even bothering to take his boots off, and rested an arm over his face. The single fluorescent light in the ceiling hummed.

Had he dozed? Musta, cos he jolted up when the door crashed open. Six or seven men busted in, he had time to clock that none of them was Merle before something heavy struck his head and he blacked out.

He came to in a crumbling old house like the one he grew up in. Dust, rotting beams, the stale scent of old piss. His arms were bound behind his back and his head throbbed like the devil.

He could hear the men milling about, speaking to each other in low voices. A pair of square-toed boots stopped before him, inches from his nose. Daryl craned his aching head and made out a face in the gloom. A hawkish nose, a brutish mouth, and a pair of brown eyes so cold and cruel Daryl felt his guts seize up. He was fucked good and proper. But he was also a Dixon, so he assumed as much belligerence as he could from his position on the floor. “The fuck you think you’re doin?” he demanded.

“Settling a debt.” The man had a low, hoarse voice.

“I don’t owe you shit! Aint never seen you afore in my life.”

“Now that, that there’s a straight untruth. Or didn’t we get acquainted when I came callin on your brother this afternoon?”

_Merle._ Of course this shit was Merle’s fault, he shoulda knowed better than to think these men would just walk away. He met the man’s gaze and realized he was the leader of the afternoon’s posse, the one who had looked him over in the doorway.

“Gimme a day or two,” he said. “I’ll work off what Merle owes, get you your damn money.”

“Nah boy.” The man crouched down and brought his face closer to Daryl’s. “Merle’s already settled with us.”

“Then what the hell am I doin here?”

The man laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. In fact, it made the hairs on the back of Daryl’s neck stand up like he’d stuck his finger into an electrical socket.

“That’s cos Merle staked you!” the man said gleefully. “Dontcha get it, boy, _you’re_ his collateral. Last week, you shoulda heard ‘im, ‘I’ll pay up, boys, don’t you worry, I’ll stake my baby brother on it!’ An’ if he thought he could send us on our merry way by wavin’ a coupla knives around… well, here ya are to settle his debt.”

The man produced a gun. It was an old-fashioned looking revolver, but Daryl didn’t doubt that it was loaded and ready to fire. Cold sweat was gathering on his brow. He both knew and didn’t know at the same time, and he was beginning to feel more frightened than he ever had in his life. Worse than the fire, worse than his da. He was almost sick with it.

“Stand up,” the man ordered quietly, placing the muzzle of his gun at Daryl’s temple.

It took Daryl several tries to scramble to his knees, and then dizzily to his feet. Several rough pairs of hands towed him to the wall, where his hands were untied. The momentary flash of hope dimmed when his wrists were instead bound to an exposed metal pipe running along the wall.

“Get him ready.” The leader’s voice came from right behind him. One of the others sidled forward and unfastened his belt and pants, forcing them down over his hips along with his underwear. Daryl sucked his lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard. I will not scream, he thought, I will not scream I will not scream I will not

He screamed anyway, a muffled shout as he bit through his lip and his mouth filled with blood. The pain, it was worse than the whip and the belt and the burning poker put together. It tore his body apart, when the man forced his way inside him. And then he broke again with the second thrust, and the third. His bound wrists were the only thing holding him upright, he’d gone limp as a ragdoll and the man had to grasp him by the hips, hard enough to bruise, to get any sort of leverage.

Tears were pouring down his cheeks as the waves of agony buffeted him to and fro. He hoped they’d kill him when they were through with him. He felt as good as dead already.

He was starting to drift away from himself, the way he used to do during the worst beatings, when the pain grew so acute he would take leave of his body and survey it detachedly from some vantage point above.

Dimly he heard the leader grunting behind him; a little further off, the other men were sniggering amongst themselves. When the man finally finished and withdrew, he was far, far away, he could barely make out his broken body below, dangling lifeless from the wrists, a trickle of blood running down its leg. No one bothered to pull its pants up; they remained bunched around its thighs, slowly staining red. He watched with fascination.

Someone jabbed him in the kidneys and he crashed back down into his body, back into its blazing agony. He spat out a mouthful of blood. It dribbled down his chin. “Christ you made a mess of him,” someone was saying, presumably to the leader.

“He’ll be good for another go soon,” the man said carelessly. “I aint through with him yet.”

Time passed, it must’ve, cos the man had him again. And again, Daryl took flight and watched the scene unfold from high up in the rafters. The body below, there was no way it belonged to him anymore. It was just a dull, inanimate _thing._

After this round, the man cut him down from the pipe. He collapsed in a heap, his hands still tied together, and blacked out for a bit. When he came round again, no one stopped him from dragging himself into a corner, where he made himself as small as possible and tried to cut his mind loose again.

But the dull throb of hurt kept him anchored to the here and now. Practically on autopilot, he began to work at the rope binding his wrists. They were hasty and rudimentary, the knots, and he worked his numb fingers through them one by one. One of the men was whistling an old Chuck Berry tune. _Go Johnny…_

Then the door flew open, flooding the room with blinding morning light. He flinched away from it, scrabbling deeper into his corner as he finally got his hands free. A familiar voice filled the room. “ _Daryl!_ Alright you sonsabitches, where’s my brother at?”

_Merle._ Daryl could make out his hulking form silhouetted in the doorway. He was too dead inside to realize that he was being rescued, after a fashion.

“He’s here,” the leader said, “ready an’ waitin for ya.”

_So they were just going to let him go?_

Heavy footsteps crossed the room and familiar hands yanked him to his feet. Daryl had trouble focusing on Merle’s face, but he heard him loud and clear.

“You sonsabitches, Imma kill you all, turnin my brother into yourcocksuckin faggot bitch!” He felt, rather than saw, Merle draw his gun, heard the click of the safety.

“Now take it easy, Merle,” the man was saying. “Just fulfillin the terms of the deal, is all. You couldn’t pay, we got your brother. You agreed to it yourself.”

“Not as your _bitch_!” Merle howled. “He was just sposed to keep you company til I came up with the dough, friendly lil bit of insurance-”

“Little misunderstanding, then. Anyway, he’s yours now,” the man said carelessly. “He’s served his purpose, I’m through with him. Don’t fuck with me again, Merle, or next time you won’t get him back in one piece.”

Merle wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t gonna start a gunfight seven to one and get his ass blown to hell. Still vibrating with fury, he began to haul Daryl towards the door. Abruptly, Daryl dug his heels in and brought them up short. His eyes found the leader’s. He memorized the nose, the mouth, the broad sloping shoulders. “One day I’ll kill you,” he told him.  “I’ll put two bullets in your brain an’ you’ll be dead afore you hit the ground.”

He made it through the doorway on his own, and then Merle had to help him to the truck. Daryl screamed in pain when Merle lowered him onto the seat; he had to slouch down so low he was practically on his back in order to take the weight off his pelvis. Merle kept casting horrified, guilty looks in his direction as he drove with uncommon delicacy, taking care to avoid bumps and potholes.

“Darlena, I had no idea-” he began, but Daryl cut him off.

“We aint never gonna talk about this,” he rasped. “It never happened, ya hear?”

“Baby, I-”

“You gotta swear, Merle, I aint fucken around.”

Merle swore. It was a promise he was probably all too happy to keep, cos they never spoke of it again.

 

xxx

 

Stretched out on an unfamiliar couch in a strange house, Daryl wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming. He saw a blurry face hovering over his – cornflower blue eyes, strong square jaw, parted lips. He stared back into those eyes, which were alight with something he didn’t have a word for. He blinked and the face was gone. He drifted through a sea of darkness, at ease in the warmth and comfort surrounding him. Then the blurry oval was back and he arched his body in giddy anticipation, ready for those blue eyes and soft lips to swallow him up and then he’d be safe and cosy inside. But when the face settled into focus, it was all wrong – the eyes were brown and hard with malice, and the crude mouth was twisted into an ugly sneer. “But you’re dead!” he shouted. “I killed you!” The man was crouching over him, reaching for him. “I KILLED YOU! I FUCKING KILLED YOU now fucking _stay dead!_ ”

He fought desperately against his enemy. He wasn’t going to let it happen again, he’d die first.

 

xxx

 

Rick snapped awake when he heard shouting. He fumbled for the light and was casting about for his robe when he heard Carl’s terrified yell. He bolted out of the room in nothing but his boxers and sprinted down the hall. He collided with someone in the doorway to the living room. They both yelped and pawed at each other until Rick managed to switch on the hall light and saw Carl trembling in his pajamas, eyes wide with fright.

“There’s someone in there!” he hissed, his voice breathy and high-pitched. “I went to the kitchen and I heard someone shouting – he’s _in there_ -” His son pointed a trembling hand.

Rick craned around Carl to see Daryl twitching and flailing on the sofa, tangled in the blanket Rick had tucked around him earlier. Just then Daryl shouted again, something mostly indecipherable but Rick thought he could make out the words _killed ya, motherfucker._

Urgently, he turned and put his hands on Carl’s shoulders. “That’s Daryl,” he whispered rapidly. “He’s a friend of mine and he needed a place to spend the night. He’s just having a nightmare. Go back to bed, alright son, and we’ll talk in the morning.” He said it firmly, to indicate he would brook no arguments.

Carl still looked afraid. “Will you be okay?” he said.

“I’ll be fine,” Rick assured him, steering his son back down the hall. “Daryl’s just having a bad dream, like you do sometimes. Nothing to worry about.”

Carl retreated reluctantly; Rick made sure his door clicked shut behind him before he returned to Daryl. The man had curled in on himself protectively and was breathing in short, harsh pants. Rick approached cautiously, loathe to startle him. He placed a gentle hand on his shoulder –

and found himself flat on his back, Daryl on top of him, pinning him to the floor. Earlier that evening he had admired it; now he experienced Daryl’s sheer ferocious strength firsthand. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but he didn’t struggle. Daryl’s eyes were wide and terrified and unseeing. “Daryl,” Rick said softly. “Daryl. You’re okay.”

“You’re dead,” Daryl mumbled, his grip tightening on Rick’s arms.

“That’s right. Everything’s fine, Daryl.” He kept up the soothing patter as Daryl’s face contorted above him. Abruptly, his whole body went slack and he collapsed on top of Rick like a marionette with its strings cut. Rick held his breath and counted to ten, and then he carefully maneuvered Daryl off of him and onto his side. For both their sakes he hoped Daryl would slide back into slumber, but his eyes were shuttling rapidly beneath their lids and when he opened them, he focused on Rick.

And for the first time, he called him by his name. Not Grimes, not Sheriff, not Officer. “Rick?” he whispered. “The hell…?”

“You had a nightmare,” Rick said in his most soothing voice, the one he used for battered housewives and frightened children. “You shouted in your sleep.”

“I hit you?” Daryl asked, his good eye widening in horror.

“Nah. You tackled me pretty good, but you didn’t do any damage.”

“Sorry,” Daryl muttered, leaning forward so his hair shielded his face. His breathing was still ragged and uneven. “Christ.”

“Do you wanna-”

“No,” Daryl cut him off sharply. “I don’t.”

But Rick had always been persistent. “You thought I was someone else,” he pressed. “Someone you thought was dead. Someone you killed.”

“Christ,” Daryl said again. “Christ.”

Rick _knew_ he should drop it, Lori had always said he didn’t know when to quit, but his brain was churning and beginning to assemble the fragments in some kind of order. _You’re dead. I killed you. Ya aint about ta try an’ fuck me, are ya? I killed ya, motherfucker._

“That man,” he said slowly. “In the woods. You said you’d never killed anyone before.”

Daryl was silent, head drooping low between his bent knees.

_Leave him alone_ , said the part of his brain that was Lori. _You’re hurting him._

“You knew him, didn’t you?” said Rick, giving voice to a suspicion first aroused by Daryl’s odd behavior back in the interrogation room. _Was she raped? Motherfucker deserved what he got. No, aint never seen him afore I shot him._ “Long ago, maybe? Daryl, what did he do to you?”

Daryl didn’t answer.

_Stop it_ , Lori implored him.

“We went through something together,” Rick said. “Out there. You saved my life. You can talk to me.”

_RICK_! Lori shrieked.

“I just wish there was more I could do.”

He jumped when Daryl finally spoke.

“ _One day I’ll kill you_ ,” he said, his voice far away like he was in some sort of trance. “ _I’ll put two bullets in your brain an’ you’ll be dead afore you hit the ground._ ”

“One to the forehead, one between the eyes?” Rick confirmed.

Daryl jerked his chin in what might’ve been assent.

Rick’s heart was pounding so loud he wondered if Daryl could hear it.

“Only just put it together myself.” Daryl’s voice was nearly inaudible. “You try an’ forget things, ya know? I was only a kid then.”

_A kid like Beth._

Rick put his hand on Daryl’s back; Daryl flinched. His shirt was soaked with sweat.

“Better if you don’t touch me,” Daryl rasped, and Rick quickly withdrew his hand. “Aint personal, s’just…”

“I understand.”

The man, the man who had hurt Daryl and Beth, he’d been cremated after the medical examiner finished the autopsy. If he hadn’t, Rick would’ve hauled the body out of the freezer and fired a few dozen extra rounds into it. The kill had been Daryl’s, and rightfully so, but that didn’t stop Rick from wanting to bring the man back to life and kill him again personally. He was so angry he didn’t know what to with it, or himself.

“What’re _you_ shakin for?” Daryl was eyeing him curiously.

“Just wishing I’d sunk a few bullets into him too,” Rick said honestly. “For what he did to you.”

“Don’t matter,” Daryl said. “He’s dead.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, Rick…”

“I’m listening.”

“If you an’ me are gonna-” he hesitated, and Rick could feel his heart speeding up. “If you an’ me are gonna be _friends_ , if we’re gonna be spendin any sorta time round each other – we can’t talk about this again. I aint never gonna tell you more about it, and you aint never gonna ask. What happened tonight, you gotta forget about it. Else-” he shrugged. “I gotta disappear. Talkin bout the past, diggin up old memories, it makes ya weak. It’s yer bad heel. I aint got time for that, ya hear?”

“Okay,” Rick said slowly, his mind still processing this speech. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Daryl cracked his neck. “Might head out now. You oughta get back to sleep.”

“Head out?” Rick shook his head. “Daryl, that’s crazy. It’s the middle of the night.”

“Don’t sleep much anyways. Gotta walk back for my bike.”

“Don’t be stupid, I’ll drive you in the morning.” He was exhausted, he knew he was, but his mind was buzzing. “How bout some coffee for now?”

The left corner of Daryl’s mouth quirked upwards in his approximation of a smile. “Fine. You got any more peas in your freezer, Sheriff?”

If he’d reverted to one of his teasing nicknames, he must be relaxing, Rick thought. He was just grateful Daryl wasn’t tearing off into the night. _He was still here. He had stayed._ That was enough. He didn’t yet know how he was going to reconcile his randy thoughts from the previous evening with the shocking revelations he’d just received now. ( _Ya aint about ta try an’ fuck me, are ya?_ ) But that was a task for a later time. After he’d gotten some sleep, maybe. Christ, he needed sleep. For now, all that mattered was Daryl staying, that he wanted to be friends. Friends –

“Hey Sheriff.” He turned to look at Daryl, following him into the kitchen. “Maybe you oughta put some clothes on, huh?”

Rick had forgotten he was still wearing only his boxers. He blushed, and went to go do as Daryl suggested.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's playing with fire to write this sort of thing, so please feel free to leave your opinions in the comments section.


	6. Straight Shooter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for hanging in!

A week passed, maybe two, and there was a message on his answering machine from Beth Greene, asking him to come see her. It made him nervous, the prospect of visiting her without Rick or anyone else there as buffer. He was afraid of what she might ask him. Far as he was concerned, he’d given her all he could – and would – give, and he sure didn’t know how to be friends with an eighteen-year-old girl who’d grown up with a pet pony and a daddy who loved her. Hell, he hardly knew how to be friends with Rick Grimes.

The sudden influx of people into his life was dizzying. Nights he once kept to himself, now he was whupping T’s ass at pool and passing out on Rick’s couch. (But they’d promised never to talk about that night.)

He didn’t think Hershel would appreciate it if he roared up to the farm on his Triumph, all noisy engine and screeching tires, so he gassed up the truck and made his cumbersome way to the Greene farm that way. It was beautiful, pastoral, an old white farmhouse surrounded by rolling fields. Several cows were turned out to pasture and they regarded him with their liquid bovine eyes as he rumbled up to the house. He wasn’t gonna go and get all resentful toward the Greenes, that wouldn’t do any good. Once a commie in a bar had told him that his class consciousness was highly evolved and there was a candidate he could vote for – but Daryl had never voted in an election in his life and wasn’t about to start then.

Beth Greene was waiting for him on the porch, wearing some kind of sundress and cowboy boots. She came down to the car to meet him, and when she smiled he saw she had some new teeth. He was glad for that at least.

“They’re just temporary,” Beth explained. “I get the real ones in a couple weeks.”

Dixons were lucky they got good teeth through genetics; he couldn’t remember ever having a dentist look in his mouth.

Then: “Oh my god, what happened to your eye?” she exclaimed.

Barfight, he started to say, then sheepishly amended it to “work accident.”

She offered him something to drink, he declined. What he really wanted to do was smoke, but she looked so sunny and clean he didn’t know if he oughta do that round her. Few weeks ago, he wouldn’ta cared. But now…

Christ, he was uncomfortable.

When she suggested wandering about the farm, he grunted assent. He felt stupid wishing Rick was there, but he’d discovered he didn’t mind following Sheriff’s lead sometimes. He was going over there again tomorrow, to the Grimes house, for another installment of what Rick was calling Carl’s Outdoor Re-Education Program. He’d made the offer nonchalantly, never expecting Rick to take him up on it, but the man had leapt on the suggestion and now he was towing the kid out to the woods once a week and threatening to sell him to the Boy Scouts if he didn’t quit chattering non-fucken-stop. At least Carl was excited to handle real guns, not just virtual ones on his remote control. Rick really had a chip on his shoulder about the whole videogame thing. Daryl had never played a videogame and didn’t see what the fuss was about. Go out and shoot a damn squirrel, not some poor animated bastard with a pretend Uzi. In his house growing up, half the time they didn’t even have electricity.

Beth took him to the stables to meet the horses. He patted their velvety noses and tugged their forelocks to please her; he’d never been much for them, personally, except on the rare occasions when they offered a better mode of transport than a bike or a car. They bummed him out a little, to be honest, all trussed up in their saddles and harnesses. He didn’t understand why they didn’t just dump their riders on their asses for having the insolence to sit on them. He certainly would’ve. Dumped them on their asses. Docility had never been a virtue he admired.

“And this is Nelly,” Beth said, leading him to the final stall. “She’s my favorite.” The horse whickered a bit anxiously at the sight of Daryl. Daryl didn’t blame her.

When they walked back into the sunlight, there was a slight crease between Beth’s brows. Obviously this visit wasn’t going the way she had hoped, but Daryl couldn’t throw her a bone. He plopped next to her on a fallen log and took out a cigarette.

“I got shot coupla weeks ago,” he said off her critical look. “These things, they’re at the back of a long line of things tryna kill me.”

“Don’t you worry about _cancer_?” she said.

“Nah.” He didn’t. At ten he never expected to see twenty, at twenty he never thought he’d see thirty, and some days, with thirty-five on the horizon, he didn’t think he’d see that either. Just how he’d always figured it’d go, after his mom. He doubted old age would come round in time to present him with the bill for years of bad decisions and hard living. As it was, no Dixon in recent years had made it past fifty-five.

He heard her sniff. Peering at her nervously through his curtain of hair, he saw that she was, in fact, crying. He didn’t have much experience with crying women. Comfort never being something he’d received much of, he didn’t know how to give it. Rick woulda known what to do.

“Beth?” he said cautiously, and she erupted into full-blown sobs. She launched herself at him, burying her face in his shoulder and instantly dampening his shirt with her tears. After a moment’s painful hesitation, he rested his hand on her back. “Hey,” he said stupidly. “It’s okay.”

“It’s awful!” she cried, her voice muffled against him. “Daddy and Maggie – they don’t – they don’t-”

“They don’t get it.”

“They don’t! They won’t s-s-stop _watching_ me – all the time! I’m af-f-fraid to even cry about it, or they’ll come r-running…” The words came pouring out as she shook against him. He felt helpless, wanting to soothe but at the same time recoiling from the way she was touching him, invading his space –

He couldn’t take it. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her away from him. “Hey,” he said again, managing to meet her reddened eyes. “It’s just cos they care about ya. They’re tryna help ya, only way they know how.”

“But-”

“You’re glad ya got found, aintcha?” (He hadn’t been glad when Merle found him fourteen years ago. He’d wished he was dead.)

“You mean, am I g-glad you found me? Of c-c-course I am! You saved my life, I owe you-”

“That aint what I’m gettin at,” he interrupted. “I’m sayin is, s’long as you’re glad to be here, glad ya aint dead, you can come back.”

“I’d _never_ wish I were dead,” Beth said, so earnestly that his heart hurt.

“So then, you gotta take the long view. That man, you call him-”

“Johnny B Goode.”

“Johnny, yeah, he fucked you up, an’ that’ll never go away, not completely. But he’s dead an’ you aint, so you’s the one with the chance.” Abruptly he let go of her wrists.

Her breathing was still rapid, but he could see she was getting hold of herself. He fished out the rag he kept in his back pocket and handed it to her. She mopped her face and blew her nose loudly; she looked embarrassed but Daryl didn’t pay any mind.

“You got bicentennial eyes,” he told her. “All red, white an’ blue.”

She gave a watery chuckle. Then her face sobered. “Daryl…”

“Huh?”

“How do you know all these things? How did you know what to say to me, when Maggie and Daddy didn’t?”

He shrugged.

“Did something-”

His defenses shot up. “Just been alive a lot longer’n you, is all,” he said dully. He’d bolt if he had to, he couldn’t –

“Daryl?”

“ _What_?” he snapped.

“Ever since I came home, it’s like – there’s this boy Jimmy, we went to high school together and sometimes he helps Daddy round the farm. He’s sort of my boyfriend, I guess, but now when he – I can’t-”

_You can’t stand for him to touch you._ “Yeah,” he said. “That’ll get better, probly.” Maybe it was true. He’d just never liked being touched at all, really.

“I feel like they’re suffocating me,” she said. “All of them.” And then: “Except you.”

“You don’t know me.” _You don’t want to._

“You aren’t afraid of me.”

He was, though.

“Daryl, I’ll never forget it – the way you walked into that cabin. I thought I’d already died and gone to heaven. I looked at your back and I saw your wings.”

His leather vest had a pair of white wings appliqued to the back. “I musta been a pretty disappointin angel,” he snorted, trying to lighten the mood.

“No, no – you were perfect.” She took his hand. He froze, unable to fling off her grip or return it. “Daryl, look at me. I think I-”

Fifteen, twenty years ago, she woulda been beautiful to him. She still was. But in a distant, wistful sort of way that felt like nostalgia for something that never was, or could be.

Her face was so close to his.

“Beth, no-”

She pressed her lips softly to his. It felt alien and unnatural and he couldn’t move a muscle. The gentle pressure was causing panic to build in his chest, it felt like there was a bird trapped in his ribcage, beating its wings wildly. He held perfectly still. When she pulled away he nearly collapsed in relief, but she was looking at him nervously with her big blue eyes. And he knew he had to be gentle, like Rick would be, even though his every instinct was screaming at him to put as much distance between them as possible.  

“I’m almost twice your age,” he rasped.

“That doesn’t matter.” The hope in her voice was like a knife in his guts.

“I can’t, Beth,” he said. “I just can’t.”

“Ever since I first saw you-”

“You don’t owe me nuthin,” he told her. She was crying again, dammit. “You don’t need me, Beth, you’re plenty strong yourself.”

“But maybe – maybe I _want_ you, too, maybe I-”

“Beth, you gotta understand me. This just aint somethin I can do.”

Her face crumpled, and like a shot she was up and running towards the house.

He let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding. When he tried to light another cigarette, his fingers were trembling. _Motherfucker._

He was pretty sure she wouldn’t try to off herself or anything stupid like that, but he couldn’t shake the queasy feeling he’d fucked up somehow. What he coulda done, he didn’t know – short of kissing her back, and the wrongness of that made his head sick and dizzy. He was just plain inadequate.

He hadn’t been with anyone, sober, since that man did what he did, nearly fourteen years ago now. Thirty-three, almost thirty-four, he couldn’t hardly remember how it worked, how it was done. And Beth Greene, for all her sweetness, wasn’t gonna change that.

Even after he got back in his truck and drove away, he was still so rattled he couldn’t face going back to his empty house and knocking around with nothing but his thoughts for company. So he did something so fucking ludicrous he could hardly believe he was doing it.

He drove to the King County police station.

In the car park, he idled the truck, wondering if he had the nerve, or the stupidity, to march in there and ask if he could see Deputy Rick Grimes. But after a quarter-hour of indecisive chain smoking, he got lucky. A new police cruiser pulled into the lot, and who hopped out of it but Rick himself and another officer. Once the other guy had started off ahead toward the building, he rolled down his window. “Rick!” he shouted. “Hey Rick!”

Sheriff’s head snapped around. Daryl waved. Sheriff hurried over, looking both officious and (to Daryl’s eye) comical back in his uniform and wide-brimmed Stetson.

“Daryl?” he said, leaning in and resting his elbows on the windowsill. “The hell you doing here?”

“In the area,” Daryl mumbled evasively.

“Sure.” Shaded underneath his hat, Rick’s blue eyes were narrowed at him. “Did something happen?”

He’d been craving Rick’s presence all day. Now, faced with the real thing, he wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted Rick to tell him, but that necessitated him telling Rick first. “Nuthin bad,” he said at last. “Nobody’s dead.”

“Christ, I’d hope not,” Rick said. “Anything less extreme?”

“I…” He could never find the words he needed. If Rick didn’t already think he was some dumb illiterate Neanderthal, he certainly would now. “Shit, man. I…”

“My shift ends in an hour.” Rick put him out of his discomfort. “Come back with me, we can talk about it over a beer. Carl won’t be home til four-thirty.”

He nodded gratefully. Even shadowed by the stupid Stetson, Rick looked tired and drawn. “You okay, Sheriff?” he asked gruffly.

“Coming off the overnight shift, just tired is all.”

Daryl was relieved. His relief surprised him.

 

xxx

 

He followed Rick home in his truck. Lydia, the hungry-eyed nanny, was there with the baby. It made his skin crawl, the way she looked at him. Like she was laughing at a joke and he was the butt of it. Worse was the way she looked at Rick, like she wanted to eat him up with a spoon. _Bitch_ , he thought as the door slammed behind her.

Rick asked him to hold Judith while he got changed. He was beginning to get used to the idea that the baby actually liked him – she reached for him with a shriek of joy and went straight for his hair again. “Lil asskicker,” he murmured, bouncing her in his arms. She seemed enthralled by the devil tattoo on his tricep, and when he flexed his arm to make the devil move, she erupted into giggles. He felt like kind of a dick, though, when Rick came back, changed into t-shirt and jeans, and found him flexing his muscles like some dumbass bodybuilder.

“You got a lot of those?” Rick asked, rummaging in the fridge.

“Few.” But Rick was never gonna see the tattoos on his back, not in a million years.

They sat at the kitchen table. He drank his first beer too quick on account of nerves, but Rick was patient and didn’t ask anything until he was midway through his second.

“You ready to tell me what’s going on?”

He bit his thumbnail, wincing when it splintered down to the quick. “S’Beth.”

“How d’you mean?”

“She…”

Rick waited patiently.

“She asked me over,” he said at last. “Wanted to talk. Said I was the only one she could talk to bout it. Then she started cryin.” He scrubbed his fists into his eyesockets. “Didn’ hardly know what to do. No good at that stuff. Gave her a pat on the back an’ told her to chin-up. Then…” he felt Rick’s eyes on him and flushed. “She kissed me,” he said to the table. “Told her no, told her there was no way I – an’ then she runs off cryin. Didn’ mean ta,” he added, hearing his voice get defensive. “Jus’ didn’ know what the fuck I’s s’posed ta do.”

Rick didn’t say anything for a moment. His thumb was bleeding now. He sucked on it.

“You didn’t want her to kiss you?” Rick said at last. When Daryl made himself look up he saw a strange expression flit across the man’s face, one he didn’t understand.

“ _No_ ,” he said vehemently.

“Why not?”

“I – she – she’s half my fucken age, Rick! I can’t – I aint about ta – … It jus’ aint somethin I can do.” He felt her phantom lips on him again and shuddered convulsively.

“I hear you.” Rick was doing the low, soothing voice thing, like Daryl was a skittish horse that might bolt. Worked, though; he hadn’t realized he was halfway outta his seat til Rick’s voice brought him back. “You were honest with her. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Didn’ stop her cryin.”

“That’s normal, it’s… she went through an ordeal. It’s probably transference, you know, what she’s feeling. You saved her life, it’s not much of a leap for her to think she’s in love with you.”

“Well, she fucken hates me now.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Worried bout her.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to call Hershel?” Rick asked. “Make sure everything’s all right?”

He nodded. Yet again, he was voluntarily handing control over to Rick Grimes. The thought shoulda pissed him off, make him hate the both of him, but all he felt was relief that Rick was taking charge.

He watched closely as Rick took out his cellphone and dialed. He couldn’t hear Hershel on the other end, just Rick saying he wanted to know how Beth was doing, that Daryl had been over there earlier and she’d seemed upset, but he was glad she was doing better now, that she and Maggie had gone out for the afternoon, and yeah, he’d be glad to bring the kids over for dinner sometime.

He’d been more gutted about it than he’d realized, maybe. He wasn’t sure what he was afraid of, exactly – that maybe she’d take a ton of pills, or try to slit her wrists or something daft like that, and that in some way, he’d be responsible, cos he couldn’t give her what she asked. But she was fine, Rick was nodding at him all reassuringly as he told Hershel what Judith had had for breakfast that morning or some shit like that.

“See?” Rick said when he hung up.

Daryl nodded. Took a long drink from his bottle. Afternoon sun was streaming through the window, and in its glare Rick looked grey and haggard. The shadows beneath his eyes were almost purple. “You look like shit,” he said.

Rick laughed. It sounded hollow, humorless. “Haven’t been getting much sleep lately. Judy, she’s going through a phase, can’t seem to sleep through the night anymore.”

It hit him like a sack of bricks, understanding, and a measure of guilt too. “You’re tryna do too much,” he said. “Lookit you, down at the station all hours, then comin back here to take care of your kid an’ your baby, all by yerself. S’fucked up, Sheriff, you’ll run yerself inta the ground.”

“I have help,” Rick said. “I had Beth. I have Lydia-”

“That awful skank?” he snorted. “She aint no help, she just wants ta fuck ya, is all.”

Rick choked on a laugh. He felt good about that, making Rick laugh. “I think her eye mighta moved on to you now. Fresh blood.”

“She got it in fer the both of us,” he said. _Us._ It felt good to say, that word, like he and Rick were united against something. Not that it mattered, not that he cared some horrid woman wanted Rick, s’long as he didn’t want her back. Not that he cared about that either. He had to get himself back on track. “Seems ta me, ya can’t go on like this.”

“Haven’t got a choice,” Rick said, and Daryl couldn’t miss the exhaustion in his voice. “It’s funny, after Lori died there were people – everywhere. A different person sleeping in the spare room every night. I had to get rid of them, in the end, cos the only people I wanted to see were Carl and the baby. People called, I didn’t answer. When I did, I said we were fine. Eventually they stopped calling. I’ve got my brothers down at the station, but there’s only so much they can do. They have their own families to look after.”

What he said next came out unbidden, especially as he’d never given a damn about anyone cept Merle for most of his life. “I aint doin shit these days,” he said. “Just some shifts down at the garage. I could–”

“Could _what_?” Merle’s voice jeered inside his head. “You gonna be the Sheriff’s bitch now, Darlena? You gonna play nursemaid to his babbies during the day an’ bend over for him at night? That what you want now?”

_Shut_ _up,_ he told Merle in his head. _You got no clue what you’re talkin about._

“I could help out,” he said to Rick. “With whatever. Not just takin’ Carl out, but I dunno, anythin you want.”

The naked vulnerability on Rick’s face made it hard to breathe. Then he covered his face with his hands and his shoulders shook. Once. Twice.

It was pure instinct. Daryl was on his feet and standing behind Rick, resting his hands on the other man’s shoulders. And when Rick reached up and put a hand over his, he didn’t flinch. He edged closer. And Rick tipped his head back and leaned into him.


	7. The DumDum Club

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all so lovely with your feedback. Thank you for staying with me!

In 1899 the Hague Convention banned the use of expanding bullets in warfare. Unlike the full metal-jacketed kind, soft ammunition expanded and fragmented on impact, creating messy, large diameter wounds that were often impossible to treat. Rick learned about this in a History of Warfare seminar, back in college. They were still used in hunting, he read, because their superior stopping power increased the chance of a quick, humane kill. When he started at the police academy a year later, he was surprised to discover they were a staple of law enforcement as well. Expanding bullets were less likely to pass through their targets; sometimes the bullet had to remain inside the target to prevent collateral damage. Scattering shrapnel into muscles and guts, DumDums kept the damage internal. And they were there to stay; sometimes even the most skilled doctors couldn’t carve them out. Some people survived and lived out the remainder of their lives with bits of metal inside them; most people died.  

Hanging up Daryl’s jacket one evening – the man had carelessly dumped it on the floor upon arrival, like he always did – something fell out of the pocket. Rick stooped and picked up a handful of loose bullets. They were small, silver and hollow, and Rick immediately identified them as of the expanding variety, probably left over from the hunting expedition Daryl and his son had gone on the other day. (No results, but Carl still came home animated and puffed up with pride that he’d _nearly_ hit a squirrel, he’d missed by less than an inch.)

Oddly mesmerized, Rick turned the bullets over and over in his palm. He wondered what it would feel like, to have something like that explode so violently inside you, yet still be completely contained within the fragility of your body.

He didn’t have to imagine very hard. The way he had been feeling these past weeks, he felt like he’d taken a DumDum straight to the chest. The left side, specifically, the side where his heart beat. There was no collateral damage. He had his job, his house. His children, the both of them, were the best they’d been since Lori died, turning up their pale flower faces and basking in the light from the new sun in their life. It was just him that felt this way, just him experiencing a new jab of white-hot pain every way he turned. His children were nurtured by the sun, but he was obliterated by it. Because he wasn’t content to stay in his own orbit, he was determined to circle closer and closer to the source.

And that was just waking. There were the dreams, too, which exhausted him even more. They were sordid and shameful. Amorphous. Nothing ever stayed fixed. He would be making love to Lori, in the slow, joyous rhythms that carried them through their first years of marriage, and then, suddenly, the soft breasts beneath his hands would recede, replaced with solid muscle. He would drag his fingers over the biceps, flexing and trembling with exertion, and then he would seize hold of the slim hips - … Sometimes it would end there, sometimes things tilted sideways and Lori would be back in his arms, comforting and familiar. And when he woke, sometimes it was the sheets that were damp and sticky between his legs, and other times it was the pillow against his cheek that absorbed a different kind of wetness altogether.

It took its toll. He became inconsistent down at the station, sitting behind his desk and spacing out, then having to stay late to finish his paperwork. Always mired in guilt. Other times he would be out on his beat, with or without a partner, and whole hours would slip by unaccounted for. He simply couldn’t remember what he had been doing, or what he had done. Twice the sheriff had called him into his office, concern in his eyes, and reminded him that he’d hardly taken any time off after the death of his wife, the birth of his daughter, and maybe he wanted to take some of that time now? He’d shaken his head, apologized for the lateness of his case reports, and then drifted away. He had become driftweed.

He was barely managing three hours of sleep a night. It couldn’t go on like this, he knew it couldn’t, he knew something had to give. And then the something gave. He was on the night shift, cruising his beat. Alone, because a vicious flu was going round the station and they were understaffed. He was driving slowly, circling the outskirts of town, when he drifted off behind the wheel. He was lucky. The car only _drifted_ off the road, _drifted_ into a tree, _drifted_ to a stop. He was unharmed and there was hardly any damage, just a crack in the headlight to show he hadn’t imagined it. But he still had to account for it. Back at the station he was diagnosed with nervous exhaustion and given three weeks to kick his heels up on full salary, courtesy of his sympathetic and reproachful sheriff. He felt like an idiot, humiliation made worse when he wasn’t trusted to drive home alone after his non-accident.

There was only one person he could call, of course. Daryl left the garage early and picked him up, roaring up to the station on his Triumph. That presented a bit of a problem. Under the watchful, dubious eye of the sheriff, Rick had to slink over to the smirking motorcycle division and ask to borrow two spare helmets because Daryl never wore one. Daryl’s eyes registered amusement as they put on their helmets, like little children getting fitted out to ride their first tricycles, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

Then Rick had to sit behind Daryl on the bike and wrap his arms tightly around his waist. It would have been worse riding bitch in a sidecar, but he still felt foolish as all hell. It looked like half the station had turned out watch them ride off, all Henry and Daisy on a bicycle built for two.

He could feel the tension radiating off Daryl as they got settled. His body was completely rigid. Daryl had grown more comfortable with Rick’s personable physicality, but it was another thing to have him practically embracing him from behind. Supervised by an audience of cops with their noses pressed against the window. Conscious of this, Rick tried to sit as far back from Daryl as he could, holding his torso at a distance and keeping his legs out of the way.

But as soon as Daryl kicked off, the bike’s acceleration threw him forward into Daryl’s back. He hadn’t been on a motorcycle in _years_ and he’d forgotten how exposed it was. Riding pillion was more disorienting than steering the damn thing yourself; he found himself frantically scrabbling for purchase as they careened down the road. It felt like careening, anyway; later he’d realize that Daryl was driving quite moderately.

At any rate, he slid along the seat until his body was flush against Daryl’s. He was clinging to him like a barnacle, probably squeezing all the air out of him. But the adrenaline was starting to kick in now. The sheer thrill of the ride lifted his spirits and sent a shudder of excitement coursing throughout his body. And then there was Daryl’s proximity. The reassuring expanse of his back, covered in black leather. The contractions of his abdominals as he braked, accelerated. The way he fit between Rick’s legs, the way their pelvises glided together. Molding their bodies into one.

Rick didn’t want the ride to end.

But he had been so lost in Daryl that when it did end, he was taken completely by surprise. They weren’t in the driveway of Rick’s tidy one-story house with its welcome mat and manicured lawn. They were practically in the woods.

A different class of people lived out here, well beyond the outskirts of town. Some of the cops referred to them derisively as rednecks, white trash, trailer park bums. There were hunters and loggers mixed in with moonshiners and meth-heads, and even a few Cherokee families too, who had foregone HUD houses and the BIA for a different kind of poverty.

It took Rick a moment to even spot the dilapidated house, which had been obscured by trees and overgrown foliage.

“Where are we?” he asked, though he had a good idea.

“My place,” Daryl grunted. He swung off the bike and tugged off his borrowed helmet, dumping it unceremoniously on the ground. “Well – Merle’s,” he amended. “Sorta. Belongs to a friend a’Merle’s, an’ when he got sent to prison Merle took it over, an’ when Merle got locked up too I figured I’d stick around til he’s out.”

Rick got off the bike too, much less elegantly. He felt bowlegged and off-balance.

“You’re wonderin why I brought ya here.” Daryl looked hesitant. “I thought, with Carl at school an’ Judy looked after, ya might wanna get away. Take a breather.”

Christ. He could be so damn _kind_.

But it didn’t seem to matter, if he was kind, or brusque, or gruff or clipped or gentle or teasing because no matter what, Rick was a moth to his flame. Forget being nearly forty, forget being a widower, forget being – (what? _straight_?) – he had it fucking bad.

“Let ya sleep or something,” Daryl was continuing, “fore I take ya home an’ it all starts up again.”

_Was_ he straight? If loving Lori more than half his life meant he was, then alright. He was. Age sixteen and onwards, he had simply never considered anyone else. Until now. And if that _someone else_ happened to be a man, well – it should have been a more seismic blow to the way he thought about himself, but somehow it _wasn’t_ , and –

“Rick?” There was real concern in Daryl’s face. “Where’d ya go man, come back.”

_I would do anything for you,_ Rick thought. _And you have no idea._

“I’m here,” he said, dazed.

“C’mon, then,” said Daryl. He clomped his way up the sagging porch steps and banged through the door. There was a hint of tobacco in the air, but as Rick’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw the place was surprisingly neat. No overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles scattered about; the prevailing impression was one of emptiness and abandonment. There was very little he could identify as _Daryl_ , just the crossbow leaning against the wall and a flannel shirt tossed over a chair.

“You want anything?” Daryl was self-conscious playing host, he could see that.

“I’m good.”

“You can stretch out in my room, I aint kept the others up.”

Daryl’s room was just as impersonal as the rest of the place. Rick got the impression he didn’t spend much time here, or in the house at all, preferring the freedom of the woods and the open road. But still, this was Daryl’s bed, and surely there was something intimate about stretching out on his sheets, burying his face in the scent of his pillow?

Rick sat on the edge of the bed to tug off his boots. Daryl hovered uncertainly in the doorway. “This is nice of you,” Rick said. As expected, Daryl shrugged and grunted, his eyes skittering somewhere off to the side. And then, _not_ as expected, Daryl crossed over and sat next to him on the bed.

“’S wild, aint it?” Daryl said, hands resting loosely between his knees. A tiny star was tattooed between thumb and forefinger on his right hand.

“What is?”

“Everything that’s happened. Since that day in the woods, feel like I wandered inta somebody else’s life.”

“Me too,” Rick said.

“Never been round so many goddam people. All the fucken time. Aint what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Thought I’d hate it,” Daryl said. “Don’t, though.”

“What you’ve done for my family…” Rick trailed off. Daryl had done a lot. He took Carl out in the woods most Saturdays, he spent time with Judith, sometimes he even brought them _food_ , sides of venison (he paid no attention to hunting season or whose property he might be trespassing on, and Rick had little inclination to stop him) and canned goods he got from one of his Cherokee neighbors.

Daryl was _protective_ of them. He was nurturing, though he pretended to be sullen about it. “Damn woman keeps givin em to me,” he would say, shoving several jars of jam into Rick’s startled hands. “I fucken hate currants.”

He’d always try to take off before mealtimes and Rick would always coax or bully him into staying. Rick had begun to wonder how much of Daryl’s standoffishness was genuine anymore, and how much of it was a charade kept up for – for what, exactly?

And yet, the more helpful Daryl became, the more time he spent with them, the more times Carl would jump off the school bus and ask if Daryl was coming over tonight, the worse Rick felt. He was awash in gratitude for Daryl’s sudden, conspicuous presence in their lives, but it sickened him how dissatisfied he felt. The man had saved his life, and he wanted _more._ He wanted more of Daryl’s sideways smirks, his raised eyebrows, his flinty eyes. He wanted to be able to touch him – a handclasp, a shoulder squeeze, a pat on the back, none of it was enough, any brush of contact only reminding him what he _really_ wanted from Daryl.

He looked back on that night in the bar, the first time they had properly “hung out,” with a kind of awe. _Something_ had passed between them that night, some kind of charged energy swap. The way they pressed up against each other as they sat on their bar stools. They way Daryl had teased him, calling him “sheriff” and “officer.” But then Daryl had been drinking heavily that night, hadn’t he? That probably accounted for some of it. And then, of course, later that night he’d learned the truth about what happened to Daryl. And immediately sworn never to speak of it again. It was there, though, making him feel ten kinds of sick degenerate for what he wanted to do to Daryl, for what he wanted Daryl to do to him.

His underwear drawer was becoming a trove of secrets. Folded inside an undershirt was a red and black handkerchief belonging to an ex-Sandinista, and hiding in the toe of a sock was a hollow silver bullet that he’d unthinkingly tucked in a pocket one night. Daryl never inquired after either item. Perhaps he didn’t know they were gone. Perhaps he didn’t miss them.

Carl had said last night, “Dad, could Daryl come and live with us?” as if it were the simplest thing in the world. _Dad, can we adopt Daryl?_ Because Daryl was his friend, too, and like his father, Carl was jealous and possessive and wanted everything in his sight at all times.

“Rick?” Daryl was shaking his shoulder, tugging him round so he could look him in the eye. “You keep disappearin on me. One minute you’re here, the next you’re off in outer space.”

Looking weak and pathetic in front of Daryl was not something Rick enjoyed, though he seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

Daryl’s flinty eyes were fixed on his. The DumDum in Rick’s chest expanded painfully. He couldn’t speak.

“What is it, man?” Daryl urged. This was the pushiest Rick had ever seen him. Usually he’d accept whatever Rick said or did without challenging him, just a curl of the lip and a narrowing of the eyes to register skepticism or disbelief.

His face was so close. Rick could see the beauty mark above his lip, the blonde stubble on his chin, the thin scars around his right eye that were only visible in certain lights. Daryl was so beautiful, and Rick was about to ruin everything.

He didn’t kiss him. He collapsed forward and buried his head in the crook between Daryl’s neck and shoulder.

Daryl was frozen.

Rick rubbed his burning forehead against the cotton of Daryl’s shirt. Then he tilted his head so his nose was pressed against the soft skin of Daryl’s neck. He bit down gently on the faintly salty flesh.

Still, Daryl hadn’t moved a muscle.

Then his teeth found Daryl’s jutting collarbone, and he nibbled his way along it until he came to the hollow of his throat. He flicked out his tongue to taste him there.

Daryl flinched at that.

He pulled away, he had to. Daryl was so rigid he could have been carved from stone. Rick disengaged and buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t look at Daryl. The only sound was the other man’s ragged, uneven breathing.

He was so fucking stupid.

Stupid to think that Daryl would want this. Stupid to lose control. Stupid to throw away their friendship when he’d come to depend on it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Rick?”

He couldn’t look at him.

“What d’you want from me?” Daryl’s tone was flat. Disappointed.

“It was an accident.” He spoke through the shield of his fingers. Though if Daryl wanted to beat him up, he wouldn’t stop him. He’d seen the haymaker that dropped the Nicaraguan in the parking lot outside the Pour House. He’d almost welcome a similar blow at this point. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Mean ta what?”

“That. It was wrong. I should’ve…” He was being a coward. He looked up, and was chilled by the utter blankness of Daryl’s face. “I’ve never – there’s never been anybody like you. Since the day we – when you saved my life and killed _him_ …” Daryl’s eyes were narrowed to dangerous slits. He’d probably use his fists in a minute. Rick never should have mentioned _that man_ , and at this time of all times, bringing him into the fucking bedroom, stupid stupid stupid. “I never expected – I didn’t plan to. Feeling this way, it just happened. Never saw it coming. You have every right to be angry.”

He was babbling now. Daryl hadn’t hit him yet. Maybe that was a good sign, or maybe he was just waiting for Rick to finish.

“I think all the time. And when I think, I think about you. I think about you all the time. I never stop, even when you’re gone. _Especially_ when you’re gone.”

Nothing.

“I know I fucked things up, and if you don’t want to be around me anymore, I understand that.”

“What d’you want from me?” That question again.

_Everything._

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing you don’t want to give.”

Daryl’s face was blank parchment.

“But even though I want you – it’s only a piece of it. Since that day in the woods, aside from my children, you’re the most important person in my life.”

Rick was spent. He returned his head to the comfortable resting place between his hands. He could’ve apologized again, but what was the fucking point? He couldn’t go back now. He’d been honest. He wondered how he’d ever be able to dig the shrapnel out of his chest and start again. Or if he’d have to live with the fragments for the rest of his life, always stabbing and twinging and reminding him of what he couldn’t have?

A hand seized his shoulder. Roughly, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. Here it came, he turned his face up blindly, he wasn’t going to going to duck from the blow that was coming. God knows he deserved it.

Daryl flung him back on the bed so forcefully Rick nearly crashed into the headboard. He struggled to sit up, but a palm against his chest forced him back down. Daryl loomed above him, ready to –

And suddenly the distance closed and Daryl was on top of him, knocking the breath from his lungs. Daryl was _on top of him_ , lying between his awkwardly splayed legs, chest pressed to his. Still, he didn’t realize what was happening, he was still braced for the fists that would beat him to a pulp, when Daryl’s teeth nipped against his jaw.

It was like being struck by lightning. From the place where Daryl’s mouth made contact with his skin, spreading outward, til he was tingling all over. He spread his legs wider, bending at the knee, and Daryl settled more comfortably between them. Now he was kissing Rick’s neck, lips and tongue and teeth all working at once. The teeth applied the pressure, the tongue moved against his skin, and the lips sucked hard, hard enough to bruise. Then Daryl shifted his weight, bringing their pelvises together –

_Jesus fuck._

A moan slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it. He tangled his fingers in Daryl’s hair and tugged, making Daryl surge forward again –

Their erections ground together suddenly, and Rick’s whole body was crying out in jubilation. _He’s hard, he wants this, he wants me too._

He let his hands drift down the other man’s back, roaming over his hips and then kneading into his ass. Daryl gasped against his neck, and in response or revenge, he did it again, thrusting hard against him. Rick bucked his hips up, creating the most delicious, heady friction between them.

They were both panting. Face still hidden against Rick’s shoulder, Daryl clutched at the sheets on either side of them. Rick dug his fingers into his ass again, and as he’d hoped, Daryl rocked forward, sliding the lengths of their erections against each other, and oh, he was burning up. He wanted more, more more more –

He released Daryl’s ass, but only so he could glide his hands under his t-shirt and feel warm skin beneath his fingertips. Daryl’s back was hard, sinuous, flesh radiating heat like a furnace –

Too deranged to realize that what he was feeling were lines of raised skin, angry craters of puckered tissue, until Daryl froze.

“ _Don’t_.” Even muffled by Rick’s shoulder, his voice was sharp, terrifying.

Rick withdrew immediately, hardly able to process what he had encountered, registering only that Daryl’s body was arching away from his. It nearly ended there, but then Daryl overbalanced and juddered his hips into Rick’s for equilibrium.

And that was it, the raging inferno was back. Daryl thrust again, very deliberately this time, and Rick rose to meet him. And still it wasn’t enough, it must not have been enough for Daryl either because he was growling into Rick’s shoulder, and suddenly he reached beneath him, taking hold of his ass and lifting him up to meet the next series of thrusts, which came in a rush of staccato bursts that had Rick writhing madly beneath him.

Daryl’s hot mouth was still sucking away at his neck, Rick knew it would leave a mark, but he didn’t fucking care.

It was messy, primal, the way they were rutting against each other. Rick was aching and throbbing against the confines of his jeans, but he didn’t think to discard them, or Daryl’s, he was too far gone in the throes of the fever ravaging his body. The shirt on Daryl’s back was damp with sweat but Rick was careful not to linger there, not when he could clutch against Daryl’s ass as Daryl clutched against his.

His legs were clamping tighter around Daryl, his whole body was beginning to seize up, but he was so lost in pressure, heat, friction, Daryl’s hard cock dragging against his, that he barely clocked what was going to happen. But then Daryl ground into him and he heard the other man’s rough voice in his ear: “Gonna come.”

That was all it took. Immediately he was shuddering and spasming and bucking, his body moving through its own waves of ecstasy without waiting for his brain to catch up. And Daryl was undulating against him, his movements wild and erratic until suddenly he collapsed, twisting so he landed half on top of Rick, half to the side.

Then the only sound was rapid heavy breathing as air was pulled back into spent lungs. Rick was frantic to see Daryl’s face, Daryl had kept it resolutely hidden throughout their union. It frightened him now that all he could see was a tangle of dark hair.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are hotting up a bit... I know, I know, finally.


	8. Outlaw Blues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the love on the last chapter! It means everything, truly, that you guys are reading and enjoying.

_Nobody ever really thinks about you when you’re gone._ A phrase he’d heard once as a kid, and he knew it to be axiom.  _No kind memories linger on…_

He had to get lost. Easier said than done, he knew the woods like the back of his hand. He tried anyway. Not tracking anything, just wandering. He tromped through a cedar swamp, bedded down in a dry crick, all but tumbled down a rocky ravine, treacherous with loose scree. Two days moving in ever widening circles, two nights under the stars.

Still not lost. His unerring sense of direction was his worst enemy.

_Go Johnny go_

He froze. Aint no way, Beth Greene was home with her daddy and Johnny was dead as a doornail. He listened. Nothing but birdsong on the air, wind through the trees.

He’d imagined it. Losing his goddam mind.

Of course all the deer picked today to come out, when hunting was the last thing on his mind. A doe and buck together, heads lowered as they nibbled at a blackberry bush. Their sensitive ears swiveled madly, but they weren’t afraid of him. They carried on eating as he crept closer, til only a couple feet lay between. They musta sensed he wouldn’t hurt them. He watched, waiting for one of them to break the spell and bolt, but in the end he was the one who moved on.

He had been alone, eleven or so, when he brought down his first deer. It was with a rifle. He wasn’t strong enough for the crossbow yet. A single blast and she was dead. He cried. Maybe cos her liquid black eyes were still open. Maybe cos his da tanned him good that morning. He never cried for a kill again.

Sometimes he talked back to his da. “The fuck was that for?” he snarled once, after his da cuffed him for no reason. “Fer bein the useless little shit I never asked for,” senior spat right back. “You spend a day in my boots lookin at yer ugly mug, you’d wish you was never born too.” In truth, he already spent most days wishing he hadn’t been born, but he gave his da the finger anyway. “You’ll die afore you see me in yer dead man’s boots.”

Incidentally, when senior died, it was Merle who took his boots. Sold em soon after, though.

_Nobody ever really thinks about you –_

Maybe he’d done it on purpose. Maybe it was his whatchamacallit, his subconscious, acting out and guiding his steps. Maybe it was coincidence. But here he was, standing in a small clearing. There was a shack hammered between two white pines.

He circled it carefully. A flutter of police tape, dangling from one of the trees. So many feet had tramped through, long after him and Rick were gone, that the grass was all wore down into the dirt. No blood, no impression to show where Johnny’s body fell. Didn’t mean it wasn’t haunted. He knew how it worked. He’d seen a chupacabra, remember.

He walked up the steps, but it felt more like he was descending into the netherworld of hell. The shack was empty. Everything he remembered – the water bowl, the cables that bound her – had been cleared by the cops. Just a lingering scent of piss and fear.

It was dark, damp and chilly inside. The ceiling beam was too low for him to stand upright. Slowly he sank to the floor and crossed his legs.

His eyes fluttered shut.

_Here ya are to settle the debt._

_Bend him over._

_I aint through with him yet._

_We aint never gonna talk about this. It never happened, ya hear?_

It musta been similar for Beth. Worse, out here in the middle of the woods with no one to hear you scream. And you had to scream, hard as you tried not to. That man, Johnny, he took everything.

All that was left was nameless, faceless women, taken from behind in bathroom stalls with total drunken indifference because he thought he should, because he didn’t know what release felt like anymore.

Until –

He hadn’t been drunk _that_ day, almost three weeks ago now. He may well have felt like it, but he wasn’t. Faced with the choice between fighting and fucking, he picked the latter. After a fashion. He wasn’t sure what it was called when –

Maybe that was why he still hadn’t acknowledged it. Couldn’t acknowledge it. Difference was, this time they both knew he was pretending.

Place _was_ haunted. Not just by Johnny and Beth, but by everyone else too. Merle. T. Carl. Judith. _Rick._

_Stop thinking_.

It was hard to inhale in here. The dankness oppressed him. He wrapped his arms round his knees and drew them tight against his chest. It was an old trick, making himself as small as possible. _Grow the fuck up, ya stupid prick_ , said Merle.

He flicked his lighter on, throwing spectral shadows up against the walls of the shack. He ran his finger back and forth through the flame, taking a millisecond longer each time even as it started to burn.

_I think all the time. And when I think, I think about you. I think about you all the time. I never stop, even when you’re gone. Especially when you’re gone._

No way it was true. Nobody ever really thinks about you when you’re gone. And he was gone now, or trying to be.

He had to get out. This place was swallowing him alive. But the darkness was heavy like molasses, pulling against him as he struggled to his feet, yanking on his hair as he forced himself back out into the sunlight –

He breathed deep, clearing out the cobwebs. The sounds of the forest came back. Trees, birds, running water.

He knew one thing. He couldn’t let the place stand. Wasn’t safe, a black hole sitting in the middle of the woods, pulling innocent life into its gravity and devouring everything.

Using his hands, his feet, a broad stick, he tried to clear all the grass round the shack so it sat in a naked ring of dirt. He felt bad for the trees. They were probably centuries old and deserved a better end than this. But fuck em.

He lit a cigarette and flicked it into the shack. It went out on impact. He lit another, which lay smoking on the ground. Maybe the wood was damp, it wouldn’t catch. He held his lighter to the side of the shack. His house, his ma, they’d burnt easy enough. _C’mon. C’mon._ A tiny flame. Delicate and nascent, finally beginning to spread. He did the same on all four corners of the structure. One more cigarette for good measure.

It was reckless and stupid.

_Burn motherfucker._

He didn’t care if it really burned or not, just so long as there were flames.

Daryl forced saliva into his dry mouth and spat. Then he turned his back on the place for good and began to retrace his steps.

 

xxx

 

_Don’t ask me nuthin about nuthin_

_I might just tell you the truth_

Bob Dylan on the radio. Maybe Rick should’ve heeded his advice. He might not be in the predicament he was in now. Driving aimlessly at two in the afternoon.

_Daryl_ had asked the questions. _Daryl_ had pushed him. And when the truth came out, _Daryl_ had disappeared. Not in body – he still brought food, still took Carl out, even stayed for dinner, though not as often. In spirit though, he was far away. When their eyes met, Daryl’s were like sliding glass, gliding past without seeing him.

Two weeks of this. And now three days without a word.

The man didn’t own a cell phone. Of course he fucking didn’t. When Rick drove to his house and banged on the door, no one answered. He had disappeared completely, and gone, he was all Rick could think about. Childlike, he wanted to rage at Daryl, throw it back in his face: _but_ you _started it!_

He could hear Judith babbling to herself from the carseat in back. His mandatory vacation from the police department was nearly up, and he had tried his damndest to be an exemplary parent during his leave. Patient, amenable, available. Not like a man nearly out of his head with confusion, guilt and aching desire.

And he must’ve done something right, because Carl was completely fed up with his dad’s overbearing presence and dishing out the worst kind of bratty adolescent attitude. To Rick’s amusement (and heartache) his son had picked up some of Daryl’s diction and inflections. “The remote don’t work!” Carl had snapped one evening, hurling it across the floor. “ _Doesn’t_ ,” Rick had corrected absently. “The remote _doesn’t_ work.” “You don’t correct _Daryl_ ’s grammar,” Carl retorted. “That’s because he’s a grown man,” Rick said. “Stop looking at me like that. You know where the batteries are.”

Twice a day, sometimes more, Rick found himself jerking off to the memory of Daryl’s mouth on his neck, Daryl’s cock rubbing against his. Reliving it did nothing to soothe the bullet expanding outward from his heart, but it did keep him from walking around half-hard all day.

He let the Honda crawl down Main Street. A police cruiser was parked up a ways; Rick wondered idly who was on duty. He was eager to resume his position, eager for the distractions it would bring. He was good at his job, and he needed something to take pride in again.

Then something happened. The cop car ahead suddenly switched on its lights and sirens and sped forward all of one block before screeching to a halt in front of the supermarket. Some cops just couldn’t resist the spectacle. Two officers exited the vehicle – he recognized them as Charley and Aiden, he didn’t know them well – and marched into the store. Curious, Rick pulled up behind them. They hadn’t had a shoplifting incident in a while, but sooner or later there was always some punk kid wanting to try his luck.

“What d’you think, Judy?” he said. “Gonna catch a bad guy today?”

Judith beamed sunnily back at him.

Three people emerged from the supermarket. Charley and Aiden – and suspended between them, trying to shrug off their restraining arms, was a familiar lean-cut figure.

Rick was out of his car in a flash, sprinting towards them.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

Daryl’s head snapped up and he fixed Rick with a menacing glare. He was absolutely filthy, like he’d been living out in the wild. His face was streaked with something dark like soot.

“Heya Rick,” Aiden said affably. “Looks like an attempted robbery, nothin much.”

“I already told ya, dumbass,” Daryl all but spat, “I weren’t there ta rob the place.”

“He went in heavily armed,” said Charley, who had Daryl’s crossbow slung over his free arm. “Mrs. Wilson saw him reachin for the cigarettes and gave us a call.”

“Yeah, and I was gonna fucken pay for em,” Daryl said. “Wasn’t gonna put an arrow through the old bitch, ’s for hunting, I toldya.”

“That right, son?” Charley drawled, setting Rick’s teeth on edge. “Well, you can tell em down at the station that you took a lethal weapon along for a bit of afternoon shopping, and I’m sure everyone’ll-”

“Hang on!” Rick interjected. “This is Daryl Dixon. Remember? He was the one who rescued Beth Greene a couple months back.”

“No shit?” said Aiden, whose hold on Daryl loosened noticeably.

If looks could kill, Rick would be dead a thousand times over from the way Daryl was looking at him now.

“Yeah, not shitting you. This is him.”

“He’s also Merle Dixon’s brother,” Charley said, unimpressed. “Shit runs in the family.”

“Give it up, brother,” Rick said, avoiding Daryl’s eyes. “I can vouch for him. Hell, the whole Greene family is ready to give him a medal. He’s no shoplifter. If he says he went in there to buy cigarettes, that’s all he was doing.”

“It aint hunting season, though,” Aiden pointed out.

“It’s always open season on rabbits,” Rick said smoothly.

“You don’t mean to tell me he was hunting _bunny rabbits_ with that manslayer there, do you, bro?” Charley was like a dog with a bone, unwilling to let it drop.

Rick gritted his teeth. “A bow’s silent,” he explained. “You don’t scare off everything in range with a single shot.”

“It probably woulda been smarter if you’d dropped the weapons at home first,” Aiden told Daryl, whose lip curled.

“Been in the woods three days,” he snapped. “Was outta fucken smokes.”

_So that’s where you disappeared to, you bastard._

“You tryna burn the forest down, son?”

Rick wished Charley would just shut the fuck up. “C’mon, man. I think we’ve got this sorted.”

“What’s got you so riled up, Rick?” Charley wanted to know. “Hero or not, he’s just another damn Dixon, which means another pain in our collective ass.”

“You don’t know him, Charley.” He glanced back at Judith, still in her carseat. He had left her alone too long already. “I know he’s a good man.”

“I think we’re done here,” Aiden said, exchanging a nod with Rick. “Let him go, Charley.”

Charley scowled, but they released him. Daryl pulled away, harder than necessary. “Fucken swine,” he mumbled.

“You want to give him a ride, Rick?” Aiden said. “Probably better to get him off the street, looking like that.”

“Don’t need a ride,” Daryl snapped. He wouldn’t look at Rick.

“No problem,” he said. He would _make_ Daryl talk to him if he had to.

“Alright, alright, see ya back at the station Monday, Grimes, you damn interfering busybody,” Charley said grumpily. As he and Aiden turned to go, his aside was still audible to Rick and Daryl: “Jesus, Dixon must bend over real nice to get that kind of treatment.”

“Fuck,” Rick said, and it happened exactly as he knew it would. Daryl charged straight at Charley, toppling the older man to the ground. A knee on the cop’s chest, Daryl slammed his fist into his cheek. “Aint no fucken fag!” Daryl snarled, landing another punch to the nose. “Rick aint no fag neither!” He was readying a third blow when Aiden seized him from behind and hauled him off his partner. The cuffs were out and Daryl was slammed against the hood of the car.

“Dammit Rick, give me a hand, won’t ya?” Aiden puffed.

Rick was standing there foolishly. It had never once crossed his mind to come to the aid of his brothers during the scuffle; in fact, he had been thinking that if he took out Aiden, he and Daryl could make their getaway in the Honda.

He compromised by bending over the prone officer. Charley was conscious and incensed with blood pouring from his nose. It was probably broken. “You can be a real sonuvabitch sometimes, you know that?” he hissed, helping the other cop up none too gently. “You provoked him.”

“Charge him with assaulting an officer!” Charley said venomously, his voice thick with pain.

Still holding Daryl bent over the hood, Aiden shrugged at Rick apologetically. “I aint got much of a choice.”

Mechanically, Rick nodded his head. He wouldn’t be able to talk Daryl out of this one. Charley began reading Daryl his rights, spitting out blood every few words. “You can bail him out first thing tomorrow, if you want,” Aiden said.

“Don’t fucken bother,” he heard Daryl mutter viciously.

He didn’t stick around to watch Daryl get bundled into the cruiser. He went back to his car. Checked on Judith, who was mercifully oblivious to the whole thing. “I’m sorry sweetheart,” he said. “Don’t tell your brother about this, okay?”

Then he drove home, his brain churning.

_Aint no fucken fag!_ Who was that meant for, he wondered, Charley or me? And then, even more perplexing, _Rick aint no fag neither._

_What do you know about it?_ he asked Daryl inside his head.

 

xxx

 

Daryl spent the night on a hard cot in the holding cell down at the station. He wasn’t just pissed, he was fucking livid, and at all of them. At the uniformed motherfucker who accused him of taking it up the ass. At the other uniform, less of a fucker but still the goddam _law,_ who put the cuffs on him, I Fought the Law And the Law Won, once a-fucking-gain. He was livid at Rick, too, for turning up when he did and fuckingdefending him like that, when he was handling it fine himself. Well, maybe not fine, but he wouldn’t have ended up any different than he was now. But mostly he was livid at himself, for going off like a stupid firecracker. His friendship with Rick had taught him that he didn’t have to blow up at every little thing, especially when it was meant to get a rise out of him. But right before he broke that motherfucker’s nose, he realized he wasn’t just defending himself – he was defending _Rick._

Not that Rick needed defending. But the motherfucker had made Rick sound like some kind of unscrupulous ass-grabbing john, and that ticked him off worse than the actual “bending over” insult. God knew, he heard that shit from Merle often enough. But to hear it said in relation to Rick, after what they had gone and done, the two of them, even though the cop motherfucker had no way of knowing what _had_ happened – it was too goddam much.

And he’d been an asshole to Rick. But he was humiliated for the man to see him like that, bundled between two cops, _just another fucken Dixon._ They’d ruined everything, the bastards. Because after he’d set Johnny B Goode’s rape den on fire and walked away, he was ready to quit hiding in the woods like a fugitive. And find Rick. He owed him that much. Rick had called him one of the most important people in his life. He’d’a’been been deluding himself if he didn’t feel the same way. And he could tell that much to Rick, without making any promises. _I think about you all the time. I never stop, even when you’re gone. Especially when you’re gone_.  

That’s what he woulda done, anyway, if he hadn’t up and got himself arrested instead.

He knew his brain was a messy, swampy place, shrink-fodder to say the least. He knew his thoughts were twisted, fevered, and completely illogical to the well-adjusted person. Memories of Merle beating him up, or tricking him into smoking a joint laced with PCP, those had become tinged with a kind of perverse fondness. Whereas the good memories, like sitting next to Rick at a bar, or Rick biting along his collarbone, or Rick coming just seconds before he did – those memories were tainted by what Johnny had done, and all the backroom encounters that followed.

Rick was nuthin like Johnny. Even knowing jack shit, he knew that. The trouble was letting himself believe it. 

And why not Rick, he wondered, shifting restlessly on the cot. He didn’t give a damn about the women he fucked occasionally, and they were just as apathetic to him as he was to them. With one exception, the junkie whore he thought he might’ve loved when he was sixteen. But she’d been dead near on twenty years, and something must have gone dormant in him since. It was easier to jerk it himself. Til a few weeks ago, when something possessed him to jump Rick’s bones and dry-hump him til they came all sticky in their pants like teenagers.

He was just as surprised as Rick. He hadn’t known what to do after. There was no script for this. He’d driven Rick home without saying a word, his jeans all stiff and stained.

When he pulled into the driveway, Rick had opened his mouth. But he’d cut him off. “Gettin late,” he said, reaching across Rick, without touching him, to open the passenger door. And Rick had gone, looking wilted in his uniform tans.

He’d waited for guilt to claim him, but shame, as he knew it, never arrived. It was a new feeling, jittery and twitchy like too much caffeine. Took him nearly three weeks of avoiding Rick’s pleading eyes to put a name to it. He was horny as all fuck. _Him._ But not indiscriminately horny. It was all for Rick.

The shock was so great he’d tried to lose himself in the woods.

_So why_ not _Rick?_

Because he couldn’t explain how there were things that he could never, would never, be able to do. Couldn’t get on his knees, couldn’t bend over, couldn’t face the wall. And there was no fucken way he could expect Rick to do things that he himself could never, would never, do.

 

xxx

 

He dozed sporadically, arm thrown over his face to shield his eyes from the fluorescent lights flickering above. He was on his feet the second he heard footsteps approaching down the corridor. He felt like twice-boiled shit, covered in dirt and mud and smoke, stiff from sleeping on the ground and then a cot scarcely any softer. He probably reeked. His knuckles were bruised and bloody from yesterday’s run-in. _You’s a street fightin man now, baby bro,_ Merle had said when he won his first major fight at the age of fourteen, against a kid nearly twice his size.

Luckily it wasn’t Officer Motherfucker who came to get him, it was the other uniform. “Mornin,” the man said. Daryl grunted. “Rick’s paid your bail,” Uniform said, unlocking the cell. “You’re free to go, man. You can collect your weapons at the-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the fucken drill,” Daryl said.

He stomped down the hall ahead of Uniform. His heart was jackhammering inside his chest. _Pussy_ , he told himself. It was just Rick. He didn’t have nuthin to be afraid of. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter wasn't too much of a letdown. Or painfully dull. But you know Daryl... one step forward, two giant steps back.


	9. Rain Dogs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments and feedback have been so wonderful and thoughtful. Truly, I can't thank all of you enough for reading and engaging.

Daryl looked like a half-starved coyote, slit-eyed and mean, when Aiden brought him out.

Nobody said anything. It was drizzling lightly outside. They walked to Rick’s car. Daryl dumped his crossbow in the back. He got into the passenger seat and stared straight ahead as Rick started the engine.

Rick peered at Daryl from the corner of his eye. He looked like he’d gone back to some feral, primeval state. A dangerous wild thing. Like a Mescalero Apache or a Green Beret. It was hard to make out _Daryl_ in there.

“Want me to take you home, then?” he said at last.

“Nah,” Daryl said hoarsely. “Your place.”

Rick looked at him in surprise, but Daryl’s eyes were still fixed on the horizon.

“Okay.”

They drove back to his empty house. Judith was out with Lydia for the morning. The house, while not large, felt vast and hollow when they walked in, their footsteps almost seeming to echo. “You hungry?” he asked Daryl.

Daryl nodded. “Whaddya got?”

“Leftovers… there’s beef stew, or I could make you some eggs, or-”

“Gimme the beef,” Daryl said, and then unexpectedly added, “Please.”

Daryl wouldn’t even let him stick the bowl in the microwave. He devoured his food standing hunched over the kitchen counter, eating with his fingers, taking no notice of the fork Rick had slipped under the arm curled protectively around his bowl. He had started making an effort when he sat down to meals with them – even Judith had better table manners than he did – but his clumsy forays into dining etiquette had all gone out the window today. He ate two helpings of the stew, all that was left, and grunted his thanks when Rick passed him a heel of bread to mop the bowl with.

Rick was too tense to eat anything himself. He kept his eyes on Daryl, for once oblivious to being watched. He polished off a tin of canned peaches before pausing for breath. “Thanks,” he said, again uncharacteristically polite. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You good?” Rick said. “I could make you more-”

“Nah,” said Daryl. “Didn’ mean ta clean you out. Bring you back some venison next time.”

Daryl looked at his boots, just as muddy as the rest of him. Rick looked at Daryl. _Next time_? He could tell from the way Daryl was holding himself that he was on edge. And then he started biting at a thumbnail, his most obvious nervous habit. Rick had to steel himself not to go over and tug the hand away before he started bleeding again. He was going to keep his mouth shut, he had decided. He wouldn’t act. Daryl had asked to come here; Daryl was in charge of whatever was going to happen next.

“Let’s go.” Daryl jerked his head. “Your room.”

Rick’s heart rate kicked into overdrive. He ignored it. He wasn’t going to let his mind explode with suppositions and possibilities. He was following Daryl’s lead now, to whatever end.

They went down the hall to Rick’s bedroom. Daryl closed the door behind them. This wasn’t the first time he had been in Rick’s room. Daryl was the type to wander around and pick up other people’s possessions, scrutinizing them with detached interest. He always put them back exactly where he found them, sometimes even buffing a picture frame with the hem of his shirt. In this vein he had wandered through Rick’s room, leaving no sign of his presence, except one of Rick’s Faulkner books had gone missing, and he was damn sure Daryl had taken it. _Good luck with that,_ he thought, never having made it beyond part one of _The Sound and the Fury_ himself. _Let me know how the story ends._

Daryl stood with his back resting against the door. “Siddown,” he ordered. Rick sat on the edge of the bed. “Keep quiet an’ don’ move.” Rick rested his hands on his knees and held still.

Daryl circled him, his body taut and predatory. Back and forth, around the bed. His eyes blazed in his gaunt face. Rick was careful not to let him out of his sight, moving his head as little as possible. Then Daryl stopped in front of him. Abruptly, he reached out and brought his hand to Rick’s cheek. It was an oddly tender gesture. Rick leaned into the touch as much as he dared, feeling Daryl’s hard, calloused palm against his face.

Then, just as abruptly, Daryl retracted the hand and took a step back. “I dunno what game you’re playin at, an’ I sure as hell don’ know why you’re botherin with me,” he said. His voice was like crushed glass, a threat of violence lurking below it.

“Am I allowed to talk now?” Rick asked.

Daryl shrugged.

“I’m not playing any kind of game,” Rick said. He wanted to say it forcefully, but he kept his voice even and modulated. “You think I would’ve lost my head and crashed my damn car if I was playing a game?”

That surprised Daryl, at least. His dark brows contracted. Clearly, he had never considered the possibility of a connection between Rick’s deteriorating state and himself.

“And as for bothering with you-” Daryl-like, he shrugged. “I only ever felt anything like this for one other person. And I was married to her for eighteen years.” Daryl’s eyes were darting all around the room, everywhere but on Rick. “I’m not saying it’s the same. It aint. But then you crashed in outta nowhere and knocked me over. Scored damn close to ten on the Richter scale.”

Daryl ignored his weak joke. “When I asked what you wanted from me, you said nuthin I didn’ wanna give.”

“That’s right.”

“But what if…” He could see Daryl wrestling with something painful and wanted to intervene, wanted to help him with the words he always found so excruciating. But he kept quiet.

“What if there’s lotsa stuff – not that I don’t wanna, I aint sayin that – but that I _can’t-_ ”

Rick felt hope beginning to stretch its tentative wings inside his chest. _Not that I don’t wanna_ – that was a double negative, was Daryl saying he _wanted_ to? He _wanted_ to, but he _couldn’t_ –. “You don’t have to,” Rick reminded him.

“But you said you -” Daryl actually colored, a ruddy flush creeping along his cheekbones – “ _wanted_ me, so then what’s the fucken point for you if I-”

“Wanting you isn’t just that one thing,” Rick said delicately, knowing he had to choose his words with great care. “You’re a hell of a lot more to me than sex. And I think you know that, if you’re honest with yourself.”

They had reached some kind of impasse. Rick’d said his piece, and Daryl looked caught in a limbo of indecisiveness. His thumbnail was back in his mouth.

“Tell me, then,” Rick said at last. “Tell me the things you don’t want to do.”

Daryl scuffed his toe along the floorboard. “Long fucken list.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I can’t…” Daryl hesitated. Rick willed him to continue. He could see the man actually trembling now and wanted to take him into his arms – but no. He had to let Daryl come to him this time.

“Can’t be on my knees.” Finally Daryl was looking straight at him, defiant and shame-faced. “Can’t face the wall. Can’t do nuthin if I can’t see your face or maybe I forget where I am. Can’t-” Daryl’s jaw worked furiously. “Can’t bend over. You know why. Can’t – fuck it Rick, I don’ even think I can kiss ya.”

Hope was beating its wings wildly now. Daryl had said things he had expected, things he would have to think on later ( _can’t do nuthin if I can’t see your face_ wrenched his guts and almost brought tears to his eyes then and there), but it was the suppressed desire and frustration of that final _can’t_ which lit a fire inside him.

“Do you want to?” Rick asked softly.

Daryl’s eyes flashed. Rick could see him standing before some bottomless canyon, rocking back and forth on his heels, wondering if he should retreat or attempt the daring leap to the far side.

And then Daryl nodded jerkily.

“Come here then.”

Daryl walked the few paces separating them and, after a moment’s hesitation, sat next to Rick on the bed.

Slowly, Rick placed his hand on Daryl’s thigh. He was prepared for the flinch that immediately followed. He traced his fingertips in light concentric circles until Daryl got used to the touch and relaxed slightly. Then he brought his free hand to Daryl’s clenched jaw and turned it towards him. “Easy,” he said, and brushed his lips softly against Daryl’s.

He was also prepared for Daryl to yank away like he’d been stung, though somewhere he registered a pang of disappointment. Daryl was looking at him wide-eyed and shocked, mouth parted slightly. There was only one way to reassure him. He slid both hands into Daryl’s tangled hair and brought their mouths together again. Something happened this time, something that not even Rick, with all his busy fantasizing, could have imagined.

He couldn’t have imagined Daryl fisting his hands into his hair and dragging him closer. He couldn’t have imagined Daryl teasing his mouth open with his tongue, Daryl gliding his tongue against his own, Daryl tilting his head to just the right angle so the kiss deepened until they were practically drinking each other. His senses were all shorting out, leaving him with just the touch and taste of Daryl, his scent of sweat and smoke and an earthy musk all his own –

_Fucking hell._

It felt like – everything. Language failed him too in that moment. He inched closer, closer until they were chest to chest, all heaving ribs and pounding hearts. Rick couldn’t have distinguished his own heartbeat from Daryl’s.

Eventually they had to breathe, refill desperate lungs. When Rick’s vision cleared, he saw that Daryl was actually _smirking_ at him, the bastard. He looked glazed and wild, his messy hair tousled all the more by Rick’s grasping hands, he looked – _debauched_ would have been the word for it.

“Fuck,” Rick breathed.

“No talkin,” Daryl said. His voice cracked on the last syllable and dropped lower, unintentionally sultry.

And then Daryl was fucking _on_ him again, his coarse stubble scraping across Rick’s skin. Their mouths were fighting a little bit and Rick let Daryl win, because Daryl was thrusting his tongue so deep into his throat Rick could have come then and there – and Daryl’s rough hands were under his shirt now, stroking up and down his ribcage. And Rick wasn’t thinking, he was too far gone, when he did the same, his hands diving under Daryl’s shirt and groping around his back.

Daryl’s mouth went cold on his, and Rick felt a violent shudder work its way down Daryl’s spine.

Daryl disengaged and edged away from him on the bed. Rick could see him beginning to shut down as he had done so many times before. So he took charge. “I know there’s something on your back,” he said. “Something you think you should be ashamed of, something you don’t want me to see. So you might as well show me now and get it over with.”

“That right?” Daryl said. He sounded weary. “Got a strong stomach, Grimes?”

“Like a steel trap,” Rick said.

“Guess we’ll find out.” Daryl shrugged out of his vest and began unbuttoning his cutoff sleeveless shirt. Rick couldn’t help but lick his lips at the sight of toned ridges of abdominal muscles, the light dusting of hair across his chest, the sudden desire to take one of those nipples in his mouth – but then Daryl flung the shirt away and turned his back to Rick.

It was a battleground. A war-torn canvas of vicious scars and puckered burn marks. Rick felt sick just looking at them, Daryl was right, but he was also filled with a renewed admiration for Daryl. First what that man (Beth and Daryl called him Johnny) had done to him when he was barely more than a kid, and now the carnage on his back, a brutal illustration to accompany his rare, scathing references to his childhood – all this, and Daryl was still the man who rescued Beth Greene, the man who took a bullet for Rick Grimes, the man who taught Carl how to move through the woods, the man who won from Judith a deep and abiding love. Had their places been reversed, Rick didn’t know if he could have done the same.

But then his eye was drawn to something else. He had seen some of Daryl’s other tattoos, the devil on his tricep, the tiny star on his hand, the x on his collarbone, but this one, inked onto a shoulder blade, utterly hypnotized him.

“What is it?”

Daryl peered over his shoulder at him, looking both angry and ashamed. “The fuck you think it is?” he snapped.

“The tattoo,” Rick clarified hastily.

“Huh.” Daryl turned back, letting Rick look. “’S two demons wrestlin. An angel an’ a devil actually, but they look the same, see. Cos sometimes your better angel winds up bein your worst devil, ya know?”

Rick knew. “Yeah,” he said. He reached out and flattened his palm over the twin demons. He could feel Daryl quivering with the effort of holding still.

He lowered his hand to the longest scar, directly below.

“This is an ugly bastard,” he said lightly. Daryl twisted around to glare at him again, looking positively outraged. Rick grinned. This was what he did best, finding the light, sometimes even the humor, in the horror of the world around him. It meant he could give others, and himself, hope; it was a quality that made him a good cop. So to keep from weeping, or exploding in mad fury at what had been done to the man beside him, he pushed further, letting his fingers find the burn marks. It looked like someone had extinguished cigarettes against Daryl’s skin. “These? You connect the dots, you got something that looks a lot like China.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he was geographically minded, my old man,” Daryl grumbled, but he didn’t sound quite as pissed. “Though I dunno if the bastard ever knew where China was.”

Rick’s hand drifted lower on Daryl’s back, where the scars collided and intersected with one another in a thatch of raised tissue. “These here? Modern art is what you got here.”

“That right? Whatcha gonna do, Grimes, stick me in a museum?”

Now that he was fairly certain Daryl wasn’t going to knock his teeth out, Rick scooted forward until he could mold his body against Daryl’s. And Daryl leaned back into him. Almost imperceptibly, but enough to show that maybe, possibly, he was grateful, and that maybe, possibly, a new level of trust had been reached.

 

xxx

 

In a rare fit of fastidiousness, Daryl asked to shower. “By myself,” he added sternly when Rick followed him into the bathroom to start the water and locate a spare towel. But he was smirking. He closed the door firmly behind him, and then a moment later it cracked open and he hurled his filthy clothes out into the hall. Feeling like a beleaguered housewife, but also thoroughly enjoying it, Rick put Daryl’s things in the washing machine and hoped it would be up to the task.

He wandered through the house, trying to forget that Daryl was wet and naked in his bathroom; his erection still hadn’t gone down completely and Lydia would be back with Judith before long.

He heard a door open and snapped to attention, eagerly taking in the sight of Daryl framed in the doorway, wet and dripping, his hair pasted in dark tendrils against his forehead, clad in nothing but the towel around his waist. Christ, he wanted to _lick_ all those little rivulets of water running over his skin, along the planes of his abdomen, down the trail of dark hair below his navel, vanishing under the towel…

“Yer starin,” Daryl informed him.

“I know,” Rick said. “C’mon, I’ll lend you some clothes.”

Daryl followed him back into the bedroom while Rick rifled through his drawers for spare sweats and a t-shirt. “Here.” He handed him the pile of clothes and stood there, his arms folded. “Go on.”

“Nice try.” Daryl turned his back, pulling the sweats on under his towel. Rick couldn’t suppress a groan of disappointment, and Daryl’s lips curved into a smug little smile as he turned back around, dimpling his right cheek. Rick found him heartbreakingly lovely in that moment. He took a step closer, but froze at the unmistakable sound of keys in the front door.

“Dammit, that’ll be Judy and Lydia,” he said, thinking hastily about grandmothers and miranda rights and mathematical equations to will his stupid dick into quiescence.

Daryl shrugged on the t-shirt and snorted in disbelief when he looked down at himself: KING COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT. “Fucker,” he told Rick. The shirt accentuated his broad shoulders and muscular arms, and the sweatpants sat tantalizingly low on his narrow hips. Rick had to tear his eyes away and think about the quadratic equation instead.

 

xxx

 

For Rick, that evening was the stuff of dreams made real. Judy crowed in delight when she saw Daryl, waving her chubby little arms urgently until she was cradled against his shoulder with easy access to his hair. Carl brought his friend Patrick over for dinner. Rick was warmed to hear genuine pride in Carl’s voice when he introduced “my friend, and my dad’s friend, Daryl,” and he watched the bespectacled kid Patrick look between Daryl and the crossbow resting near the door with open-mouthed awe.

“Daryl’s teaching me how to shoot it,” Carl boasted, despite having been told at the beginning of his apprenticeship that he’d have to build some serious muscle first. Daryl raised his eyebrows slightly, but let Carl have his moment.

“Can I hold it please, Mr. Dixon?” Patrick asked eagerly.

Rick was about to open his mouth and explain, cop fashion, that a crossbow was a lethal weapon, not a toy, and should only be handled with the proper training, but Daryl shrugged. “Knock yerself out, kid.”

So Rick watched tensely as Patrick walked over to the bow. He ran his hands over the stock and hefted it into his arms. “Is it ready to fire?” he asked.

“ _No_ ,” Rick said forcefully.

“Just about,” Daryl said. “Aint cocked, is all.”

“How do I, um, cock it?” Both boys giggled a little.

“Put yer foot in the stirrup” – Patrick did – “now just pull the string back til it catches.”

Patrick pulled. He pulled and tugged with all his might but could barely move the string half an inch. Red-faced and panting, he admitted defeat. “What’s the matter with it?”

“Oh, didn’ I say?” Daryl affected surprise. “Thing’s got a one-fifty draw weight.”

Rick grinned. Daryl knew what he was doing with the kids.

“One hundred and fifty _pounds_?”

Carl, who had been through a similar hazing ritual, cracked up. And Rick, who had roamed his hands all over those chiseled, 150-pound capable arms, had to look away, so none of the others would see the hunger in his eyes.

Because they had company, and because Daryl had eaten all the leftovers, Rick broke one of his self-imposed single-dad rules and ordered pizza. And suddenly it seemed stimulating, rather than exhausting, to have a full table again, with Carl and Patrick boisterously showing off for Daryl’s benefit, and Daryl, supremely oblivious, ministering to Judith in her high chair and making sure she’d eaten all her food before he touched his own.

Rick’s heart felt full.

It got even fuller when, much later, long after Patrick’s mom had picked him up and he had tucked Judy into her crib and Carl had retreated to his bedroom, Daryl still showed no signs of intending to depart that night.

Stacking up empty pizza boxes, he mustered his courage: “You staying?”

“Might as well.” Daryl’s voice was low and gravelly. “Still rainin like a bitch out there.”

Rick abandoned what he was doing and all but sprinted over to Daryl, who permitted him one brief, shallow kiss before elbowing him away. “Yer a fuckin dog, Grimes,” he said. “Gimme a chance to get my brain sorted.” But there was no rejection in Daryl’s eyes, only forbearance, and Rick managed not to feel too hurt by it.

Rick brushed his teeth while Daryl padded outside for a smoke, wondering how the evening would unfold. He drifted back to the bedroom, debating if he should offer Daryl the couch, or offer Daryl the bed and take the couch himself, or to push his luck and see if Daryl would stay in the bed with him. He stripped down to his boxers, indecisive. If Daryl wanted space, so be it, but sharing a bed wasn’t the same as sex, and maybe Daryl would be willing –

Daryl slipped back into the room, smelling of tobacco and minty toothpaste. The door closed noiselessly behind him. His eyebrows leapt towards his hairline at the sight of Rick standing there in his underwear, and looked like he was hesitating.

“You wanna sleep here?” Pause. A jerky nod. “Good,” Rick said. He pulled back the covers invitingly. “C’mon.”

“Turn off the lights first,” Daryl said.

“Why?”

“Cos I sleep bare an’ I don’t want you starin at me while I take my clothes off,” he said, irritated.

All the blood rushed south to Rick’s cock. Hastily he switched off the light, and in the darkness he listened to the soft sounds of Daryl pulling his shirt over his head, kicking the sweatpants away. Rick was tempted to shuck off his own underwear but decided not to press his luck. Enough. Enough for one day. He slid under the sheets after Daryl had settled himself, easing into a comfortable position.

“An’ no touching,” Daryl warned.

Rick didn’t argue. But if their bodies unconsciously curved toward one another in sleep, who was he to blame?


	10. Earthquake Weather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it looks like this thing is shaping up to be 12 chapters. Getting down to it!

_There’s a storm coming_ . Whenever people said that, they sounded afraid. Darkening skies and gathering clouds, they ran for the nearest roof. Thunder and they would fasten their shutters, lightning and they would cover their eyes. Never that way for him, though. He would walk out into the pouring rain. In seconds he would be drenched to the bone and shivering. He knew about conductors and insulators, he wasn’t stupid, he just didn’t care. Sometimes he would lie down on the ground as it turned to mud and let the deafening claps of thunder roll right through him. The earth below would shudder, and the trees would groan. You could hear strange things in the pouring rain, sometimes. The steam engine whistle of an old blues train, or the twang of a guitar. He let it all seep into him. And before the storm passed he’d stumble to his feet and tip his head back and let the rain wash him clean again.

Maybe this was a different kinda storm, but his body received it the same way. With the exaltation of complete surrender.

Began that way, at least, as he lay on his back and let the elements overpower him. But then something happened, something that had never happened before. He was struck by lightning. The force of it sent his body flying through the air and for a split second he hovered there, in meteorological limbo. A conductor lets the electrical current flow through it. An insulator resists it. He was both.

Rick had just pulled his jeans down his legs. His shirt was long gone, there was nothing left but the thin cotton of his underwear. Rick crawled up between his legs and dragged his teeth and tongue over that one spot on his neck, and that was when it struck, the lightning. A jolt of electric arousal shot through his whole body, from Rick’s hot mouth at his neck to the very tips of his toes.

He seized the back of Rick’s head to anchor himself, knotting his fingers through those curly locks. His back arched of its own accord, and that’s when he heard Merle’s voice in his ear: _Yer like a bitch in heat, Darlena._ He flinched, seizing Rick’s wrist just as the other man started tugging at his boxers.

“What’s the matter?”

There was no words. Just the stifling sensation of suffocation. _Fuck you_ , he told Merle. Rick’s hand was inches from his straining cock and here Merle had to get in the middle of it. _This aint about you._

It was one whispered word from Rick that finally sent the apparition of Merle packing: “ _Please_.” With Merle gone he could squeeze his eyes tight shut and lift his hips just enough to indicate consent. He felt rather than saw Rick remove his underwear; he couldn’t look even though he _felt_ Rick’s eyes on his face, not anywhere further south.

His eyes shot open when Rick took hold of his right knee and brought it over his shoulder. Fuck. His leg was shaking, but draped over Rick’s body as it was, he could feel Rick trembling too. He didn’t know whether to feel better or worse that Rick was scared too, maybe.

“Relax.” That was Rick, talking stupid again.

“Are you fucken kidden me?” he forced out. Godammit, he was naked in the man’s bed, his painfully erect cock was quivering against his belly, and he had to keep track of Rick’s mouth because it was dangerously close to –

“Motherfucker!”

Cos Rick had taken one of his balls into his mouth, teasing the sensitive orb with his wicked tongue, and his whole body was vibrating like a plucked string.

“Shit motherfuck ah _Jesus-_ ” the profanity was pouring out of his mouth in an endless torrent.

“Shhh.” Rick released his testicle with a popping sound. “You remember who’s asleep down the hall, don’t you?”

Fucking _kids._ But Rick was still looking so goddam pleased with himself that he bit out another “ _fuck you_ ” to cover his embarrassment. In punishment Rick licked the underside of his balls, making them clench upward. He hissed sharply, scrabbling for purchase against the sheets bunched beneath him. This was – _insane._ Insane to have Rick’s mouth buried between his legs, insane to have Rick’s tongue teasing him like that – they were grown men, the both of them, surely it wasn’t sposed to feel like this, surely he wasn’t sposed to come undone at every little touch.

But he was. Rick was playing him like a goddam harpsichord.

He nearly shot off the bed when Rick’s hand finallyclosed around the base of his cock. His instinct was to pull a pillow over his face and hide until he could regain some semblance of control, but a different, more vocal instinct was demanding that he prop himself up on his elbows and fucking _watch._

He was fascinated by the way his cock looked in Rick’s hand. He saw as much as felt the way Rick adjusted his fingers around it, and a ripple of pleasure coursed through his spine when Rick squeezed more firmly. His dick was flushed the same shade of pink his cheeks probably were.

But then the onslaught of sensation started to become too much, tipping him over into the brooding side of madness. “Rick-” he forced out, his voice emerging helpless and pathetic and disgusting him. “I need-”

But Rick seemed to know exactly what he needed, because a second later, _motherfucker,_ he was in Rick’s mouth.

_The flyin fuck are ya doin_? He demanded, but all that came out of his mouth was a hoarse grunt. The feeling, it was goddam seismic.

Rick was bobbing up and down, sucking hard then soft then hard again. His hips bucked upward wildly, inadvertently forcing his cock against the back of Rick’s throat. Being enveloped in all that heat, he damn near shot off then and there, but he could feel Rick’s throat convulsing and gagging round him; hastily he lowered his hips and looked nervously upward. Rick was red in the face but his lips were still determinedly pursed round his cock and that, that was a motherfucking sight.

He could feel the sweat breaking out on his brow, trickling down his temples.

And Rick, his offense never relented. This time, he pumped his hand round what couldn’t fit comfortably in his mouth. He swirled his tongue round the head and then went back to bobbing, and sucking, then maybe all of it at fucking once, he was too far gone to discern which way was up.

His body was nearly levitating now; he could feel the violent pulsations moving along the length of his cock. He had to warn Rick before it was too late. He tugged sharply at the man’s hair, hard enough to sting: “Gonna come.”

But Rick paid no heed and then it _was_ too late. The whole world shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, the tectonic plates converged in a mighty eruption, and his white-hot release flooded into Rick’s mouth. 

The aftershocks went on for a long time. His hips wouldn’t stop juddering even after Rick’s mouth went away, his heart pounding so hard it sounded like rain on a tin roof. He tipped his head back and let the sensations recede, a thunderstorm passing on.

“Jesus Christ, Rick.” The other man was still lying between his legs, face resting against his stomach. Weakly, cos his muscles had turned to rubber, Daryl hauled Rick’s head up so he could see his face. He was grinning, the bastard.

“Where the hell did that come from?” he demanded.

“It was alright then?” Rick’s blue eyes were alight with mischief and Daryl cuffed him lightly. “Ouch.”

“Nobody never-” Daryl caught his breath but ploughed ahead –“…done that for me afore.”

Rick crawled up his body and, without warning, pressed his lips firmly against Daryl’s. Daryl squirmed and resisted. It was disconcerting to taste himself, the thick, faintly bitter traces of his own cum, on Rick’s mouth. It revolted him but Rick held him fast and he made himself stay put on account of what Rick just did for him. But then, as Rick’s tongue lazily tangled round his own, it began to feel familiar and arousing again, and fuck it if his cock wasn’t stirring to life again.

Part of him was ready to scramble away into his clothes and crawl into a corner where he could be alone and berate himself and try to figure out what the fuck had happened. But the guilt never surged forward to claim him like he thought it would. So he let his arms creep round Rick’s back to hold him close til the final tectonic tremors came to a still.

 

xxx

 

Early Monday morning, the day Rick was due to return to the station.

He had felt Daryl’s absence keenly all night, but the man said he needed to fucking _breathe_ and went back his own place to sleep. It was fine. He hadn’t minded, much. Daryl would always be ferociously independent, an unrepentant outdoor cat, he figured, and the sooner he accepted it, the easier things would be. For the both of them.

The separation had been made easier by Daryl’s parting gift. A firm calloused hand moving up and down his cock and, when he was close, thin smirking lips had curled around the tip and drank him in. Daryl swore he’d never get on his knees for nobody, but he didn’t seem to mind crouching over Rick’s body while Rick lay shuddering and panting and helpless below him. Rick thought he might’ve come twice in one go.

In a gesture meant to demonstrate their return to normalcy, Rick put on his uniform and went down to kitchen before he woke Carl for school. He was just laying out the breakfast things when Carl himself appeared, a remarkable fifteen minutes early.

“Morning,” he said. “You’re up early.”

Carl, as usual, mumbled something indecipherable in reply. But he didn’t look groggy; on the contrary, he looked tense and alert.

Unlike Lori, Rick rarely fished for conversation. He generally figured the other person would speak up when they were ready to say whatever it was they had to say. And after a couple minutes pushing the scrambled eggs around his plate, Carl said, “Dad, I need to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

Carl hesitated. He began to bite at his thumbnail, another Daryl habit acquired by osmosis over recent months. Rick would lecture him about it later rather than knocking Carl off course now. “Are you…” Carl swallowed hard. Rick waited. “Dad, are you in love with Daryl?” Carl said in a rush. His face immediately turned brick red, but he was fixing his father with the insistent blue-eyed Grimes stare that wouldn’t take silence for an answer.

Rick had suspected it might be about Daryl, because the man had stayed with them for several days straight now and Rick hadn’t bothered to make the couch look slept in. But he hadn’t suspected that his inquisitive twelve-year-old son would be wiser and quicker than he was, as far as Daryl’s evolving place in their lives went.

“… I think so, yes,” he said, surprising himself. But as soon as the words dropped from his mouth, he knew it was true. He loved Daryl, of course he loved Daryl. Before Lori died there had been a lot of love in his heart, love that he was ready to extend to just about anyone. That had all shriveled up after she died, and at first he thought his feelings for Daryl merely harbored the reawakening of his old emotional generosity. But they didn’t. Parts of his heart were as cold and scarred as ever. No, Daryl was something else entirely, a state of being as well as a verb. He loved Daryl. He was in love with Daryl. He was fucking head-over-heels.

His son was still staring at him, something registering on his face, but it wasn’t shock, or anger, or anything readily identifiable. “Carl?” he said cautiously.

“I don’t really understand it,” Carl said. ( _Neither do I_ , thought Rick.) “All weekend, I was trying to decide if I was pissed at you. Because Mom.”

“I could never replace your mom. Not with anyone,” Rick told him. “I’m not trying to. Things just…” _Happened._

“You started acting weird all the time, after you met him, like you were sleepwalking,” Carl went on resolutely. “And when Daryl stopped coming around so much, you were like, depressed all the time.”

Carl was more perceptive than he had any right to be. “It wasn’t that simple,” Rick said, perversely determined to yank his problems beyond Carl’s adolescent understanding. “I had some kind of sleeping disorder, and I was worried about you and your sister. That I hadn’t been around enough for you guys after Mom died. And things were crazy at work, I think the strain mighta finally caught up with me after we got Beth back, and-”

“Bullshit,” Carl said. “It was Daryl.”

“Watch your mouth,” Rick told him. “And you’re wrong. It was all those things. But Daryl was in the mix too.”

“I thought I’d hate you,” Carl said. “I tried to, all weekend. But you didn’t even notice, cos you were so busy staring at _him_ all the time.”

“I’m sorry,” Rick said, his heart sinking. Carl was right. He’d worn his happiness too obviously the last couple days, so ecstatic was he that Daryl was finally his to touch and hold as much as he wanted (well, as much as Daryl wanted), that he’d never stopped to think on how Carl wouldn’t take it for granted in the same way that baby Judith did. “I’ve been selfish. And I’m sorry for that.”

“Yeah, you _have._ ” Like both his parents, Carl was relentless. “You should’ve _asked._ You should’ve _told_ me.”

“There was nothing _to_ tell, until a few days ago,” Rick said honestly. “I thought Daryl wasn’t interested in, uh, those things.”

“You’re so dumb,” Carl informed him. “He _watches_ you. All the time. Like, he never stops.”

Rick flushed with pleasure at that and felt a rush of affection for his son. But Carl’s snapping eyes warned him off.

“It’s so _weird_ ,” Carl said. “You and him, like – _that way_. But he isn’t just yours, Dad. Daryl’s _my_ friend too and I don’t want him to be _Mom_ but he’s also the only person I’d _ever_ want to, you know, be with us.”

Rick gathered his son into his arms, and Carl let him do it. “Thank you for saying that, son.” He was choking up. “I love you.”

Carl mumbled something back that sounded like _Love you too._

“But I don’t – we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves in all this. I still don’t know if that’s what Daryl wants. He may not.”

“Don’t be retarded,” Carl said into his shirtfront. Rick gave him a little shake. “Fine, don’t be _dumb_ , Dad. It’s like, so obvious.” He squirmed out of Rick’s embrace and went back to his chair, picking up his fork again. “I don’t completely get it,” Carl said. “And I’m still mad at you for being an asshole. But I don’t, like I don’t mind. Patrick’s gay, too.” He went back to his eggs.

Rick’s jaw dropped in astonishment. Not that Patrick was gay, of course that didn’t bother him, but that his adolescent son sounded so unfazed by it. He was proud of Carl. But then he had to go back to that word and pick it over a little bit. “I don’t know that I can say I’m gay, Carl. I’m just someone who’s only ever loved two people in his life, your mom and Daryl. I don’t know if there’s even a word for that.”

“There is,” Carl said, furiously shoveling food into his mouth. “It’s called whipped.”

“Hey, watch it!” Rick told him. “I’m still your dad and I’ll ground you if you keep mouthing off like that.”

Carl rolled his eyes, _Yeah right, I’d like to see you fucking try_ , and kept eating.

 

xxx

 

Daryl sped down the road, the chopper roaring beneath him. _Gotta stay focused._ But he was seeing things.

Rick Grimes, with his wavy hair and full kissable lips. The places those lips, that mouth, had been. On _him._ He couldn’t fucking square it, sometimes, what a man like that, a man who could score any chick he wanted, was doing with his head between _Daryl_ ’s thighs. Everything about Rick screamed confident masculinity, just like everything about _him_ screamed ugly hollowed-out no good black sheep boy, with the scars and tattoos to prove it. _Cross to the other side of the street, ladies an’ gents, lock up yer kids. That’s right, go ahead an’ stare at the Dixon boy._

Oh, Rick stared all right. All the fucking time. But Rick looked at him like they shared a secret, just between the two of them.

Rick had reached into the distant recesses of his blackened chest and scooped out his heart. He’d cleaned off the dust and the filth and stuck it back in, stronger and cleaner and renewed.

Nobody had ever bothered to do that for him.

He had something to take care of, though, before he went back to Rick. ( _Fucken faithful sheepdog you’ve become, Lassie,_ sneered Merle.) Something he had to set right.

No chance of making a discreet arrival this time. When he came to a stop in front of the Greene farmhouse old Hershel was already standing on the porch. Daryl approached him, nervously slapping his gloves against his thigh. “Hey, Doc!” he called.

Hershel came down to meet him. “You made enough noise to rouse the dead, son,” Hershel said. “I thought it was the end of times coming for us.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Bike was my brother’s, haven’t got round ta changin the engine yet.” He squinted and shaded his eyes. “Beth here?”

“She’s down at the coops.” Hershel pointed. “Is everything all right, Daryl?”

“Yeah, fine,” he mumbled. He didn’t know how much, if anything, Beth had told her family about what went down between them last time. “Jus’ wanted ta see how she was.”

“She’ll be glad to see you,” Hershel said. ( _That so?_ ) “Come up to the house for a cold lemonade before you leave.”

Daryl made his way over to the coops and spotted Beth tossing cornfeed to the squawking hens. She was dressed in jeans and work boots this time, and he thought he liked her better this way than in her stupid sundress. “Hey.” He stopped a few feet away from her.

Beth sat back on her heels, looking up at him. The sun was in his eyes and he couldn’t read her face. “Hi Daryl,” she said. “How’re you?”

“M’fine,” he grunted. “You?”

“Good. Better.” Slowly she stood up and brushed off her hands. His eyes were drawn to something red tied around her wrist. “That’s your bandanna, the one you leant me last time. You can have it back,” she said quickly, reaching to untie it.

“Keep it,” he said. “Glad ya have it.”

“Really?”

Girl was looking up at him, not quite frowning or smiling. _Damn women._ They had always been inscrutable to him.

“Yeah. Listen Beth…” He scuffed his boot in the dust, raising up small white clouds. “I’m…” _Never apologize to nobody_ , said Merle. “…’M sorry bout what happened. I acted like a dick. I shouldna-”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” Beth interrupted. “You didn’t want me to and I did anyway. I thought I could change your mind. Stupid.” She shook her head.

“Weren’t stupid,” he told her. “Sometimes you gotta…” He thought about Rick and flushed. “Sometimes you gotta do stuff like that. Else you’ll never know.”

“Maybe.”

He thought she might be about to cry again. “Listen ta me, Beth. There’s somethin I gotta…” _Just spit it out, ya big pussy._ “Ya gotta understand, it aint you. It’s me. I woulda liked ya like that, maybe, long time ago. But things’re different now.”

“Different how?”

“Rick,” he said.

“ _Rick_?” she repeated, looking confused. “Wait, you don’t mean – oh. _Oh._ ” Her enormous blue eyes got even bigger and rounder. “So you’re-”

“Aint nuthin,” he interrupted quickly, “one way or another, really. Started to think I weren’t _anything_ til Rick.”

“So you love him?”

“Dunno.” He shrugged. “Might. Still workin it all out in my own head. But that’s why, Beth, why I couldn’ be what ya wanted, an’ I figured ya deserved ta know after the way shit went last time.”

Christ, he’d made a fucking speech. He could feel his face reddening. Too many people, too many damn people in his life now, he was always apologizing to someone or thanking someone or chasing after someone else. He didn’t know how people, normal people, coped with such fucking populous lives.

“I’m glad you told me.” She broke in on his thoughts. “Maggie said I only loved you cos you were the one who rescued me, and I had everything all confused inside my head. Maybe she’s right, but a part of me _is_ always gonna love you, Daryl. I wouldn’t be alive without you and I think that’s a decent reason for loving somebody.”

She was brave, he thought. Braver’n him.

“I broke up with Jimmy, my boyfriend from before,” she told him. “Not just cos of you. Everything’s still so confusing and it’s all fucked up inside my head, like some days I wake up and I’m so happy to be here, and other days I just feel dirty and tired and sad. So I thought it would be good to take some time for _me_ , you know?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Jus’ don’ take fourteen years ta figure it out, like I did.”

“Fourteen years?” She laughed a little. “Wait, what do you mean, fourteen years to-”

“Lied to ya last time,” he said. “Him, Johnny B Goode. Long time ago, Johnny did the same ta me what he did ta you.”

“Oh my God.” She clapped a hand to her mouth and her breathing hitched. She was gonna cry again. “Oh my God, oh my God, Daryl-”

“Aint necessary. You know better’n anyone, is what it is. All I’m sayin, don’t wait too long ta let it be okay again, or it aint never gonna be okay.”

“Did Rick make it okay? For you?”

“Gettin there,” he said. He was beginning to fidget. His limited emotional resources had been tapped for the day. “Chin up, girl. Yer daddy says he got lemonade.”

But she threw her arms around him first. He let her do it, then tentatively curled his arm round her shoulders, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't emphasize enough how generous all of your feedback has been. I appreciate you guys SO MUCH. I know Rick and Daryl have been crawling along at a snail's pace, but they're getting there, too.


	11. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

It was the Wild West out there with Daryl, as far as Rick was concerned. Cops’n’robbers, police’n’thieves, cowboys’n’Indians. Sometimes he felt like Pat Garrett chasing Billy the Kid all over creation, always one step behind.

His brothers down at the station teased him for styling himself as some kind of old-school gunslinger. He carried his beautiful antique Colt Python revolver, inherited from his father, which he preferred over the standard-issue Glock. Ranger Rick, they called him, the Lone Ranger. Whoever he was partnered with inevitably got saddled with the epithet Tonto.

It wasn’t all in jest. Rick took his job seriously. He was dogged and determined and absolutely ruthless when he had to be. But he was compassionate, too, and never took the law as gospel. When rules had to be bent, he bent them. He sped through yellow lights, dodging red by just a hair.

I fought the law and the law won, Daryl would say ironically whenever Rick got his way in something. Or smugly, when he got his own: I fought the law and _I_ won. Must have been something he picked up from his brother, cos Daryl was always chanting that damn song, chain-gang style. _Does he really feel like I’ve clapped him in irons?_ Rick wondered sometimes. But he was learning that sometimes Daryl just liked to huff and complain to remind them both that the law was a dozing lion that he took great pleasure in prodding with a pointed stick.

As for Rick, he might’ve been workin for the law, but as far as lawmen went, he still felt more Wyatt Earp than Pat Garrett.

And then there was the robber to his cop, the thief to his police, the Indian to his cowboy. The Kid to his Garrett. They called him the Kid not just cos his number was up at 21, but because he was handsome and smooth-jawed with the complexion of a lady. Daryl had astonishingly clear, beautiful skin for someone who spent most of his time covered in sweat and dirt and, occasionally, blood. He could never grow much of a beard, just that enticing scruff on his chin that felt so damn erotic scraping over Rick’s skin. 

Daryl was lithe and cunning as a cat, though he could be mean as a coyote when he wanted to be. His skill with weapons was staggering. Not just when he dropped the man called Johnny with two shots to the head. Rick had seen him at target practice now, with his crossbow, with his knives, with his guns. He spoke his own strangely accented Dixie version of Spanish, and seemed to have picked up a bit of Cherokee from his neighbors. To Carl and his friend Patrick, Daryl was a hybrid of outlaw and folk hero. He flipped his middle finger to whatever he didn’t like and fought like hell for what he did.

Christ, Rick loved him.

 

xxx

 

To the immense relief of everyone, Beth resumed her position as Judith’s nanny not long after Daryl paid her a visit. Rick had no idea what passed between them or what had been said, he never asked, but whatever it was, they were at ease with each other now. And at least their obvious mutual affection united him and his son in one thing: jealousy. Rick’s was stupid and irrational, but Daryl brought out his possessive side. He resented Daryl’s gentleness with Beth, but then again, in his weakest moments, he also envied the attention Daryl lavished on his own son and daughter. And as for Carl, although he knew what Daryl was to Rick, although he adored Daryl himself, he still glared daggers at the man whenever he saw him in conversation with Beth. His crush was so bad he started stammering whenever he spoke to her. Giving Daryl the side-eye, Rick could relate.

Daryl had flinched when Rick told him that Carl knew, and buried his face in his hands. “It’s fine,” he soothed, “he’s okay with it.”

But from that uncomfortable conversation emerged a new reality: Daryl didn’t want anyone to know. “Who are you worried about?” Rick demanded. “Carl knows, Beth knows, Judith’s a baby, and your brother’s in prison.”

“You really want all your pals down at the station to know you’re suckin dick?” Daryl said incredulously. “An’ fuck, if they knew it was _my_ dick, they’d probably charge ya with accessory just ta be on the safe side.”

That _was_ something Rick hadn’t considered, lost in his happy domestic fantasy of lover and children and friends. At work he never mentioned Daryl, though he’d almost convinced himself it was to avoid further conflict with Charley, who seemed keen enough to bury the hatchet.

How _would_ his brothers react to the news that the Lone Ranger had a secret penchant for cock?

Everyone knew him as a married man, Rick and Lori and Lori and Rick, and then suddenly and very tragically, only Rick. But Rick who was still the father of Carl and poor motherless Judith. Throw in a gun and a badge, and American manhood had never come straighter.

With _gay_ not managing to explain what he was to Daryl and what Daryl was to him, Rick had been toying with other words. _Queer._ But that smacked of academia and theory, and it could easily sound pejorative in the mouth of someone too squeamish to say _faggot_ but leaking hate nonetheless. He looked up _bisexual_ and found a battleground of internet disagreement over its legitimacy. Christ. In the U.K. they said _bent_ , as in opposite to _straight._ He found that one funny and tried to imagine himself saying, _No no, I loved my wife very much, I’m just a little bent, too._ He couldn’t do it with a straight face.

He just couldn’t find the right fucking words, and he figured that until they did, maybe Daryl was right and there was no need to go crying it from the rooftops. The secrecy, though, the little deceptions Daryl insisted on even though no one was watching, that didn’t sit right. Daryl damn near made Beth sign in blood that she wouldn’t tell her father or Maggie (though Rick was certain they already knew, or guessed, and didn’t care a bit), and when he stayed over, Daryl insisted on moving his bike or his truck, so the neighbors wouldn’t know he’d spent the night.

At dinner the other night, Carl had suddenly up and asked, “So are you guys like, _boyfriends_ or something?” and the look of naked revulsion on Daryl’s face echoed the distaste in his son’s voice. Daryl Dixon was _no one’s_ boyfriend. Rick didn’t much like the sound of it himself. “Fuck off, will ya?” Daryl had snapped at his twelve-year-old son, and when Carl whined for the millionth time about how it wasn’t fair that Daryl got to use profanity and he couldn’t, Rick was glad to read his son a stern lecture about watching his language that diverted the flow of the conversation into safer territory.

 

xxx

 

Rick wanted to have sex with Daryl, very much, but suddenly shy as a teenager, he didn’t know how to broach the subject. Maybe Daryl was happy to stick with hands and mouths, and given his history, Rick couldn’t blame him. Daryl said he couldn’t _bend over_ like that was the end of it, and Rick couldn’t find the words to tell him that maybe there was another possibility he hadn’t considered.

Of course, that asked something new and frightening of Rick, but he had wrapped his mind around the idea long enough that he had begun to find it exciting and arousing as well as intimidating.

Several days in advance, he decided that on Friday night he’d make his offer. Daryl almost always stayed over Fridays to enjoy a leisurely Saturday morning with them when he didn’t have to be at the garage til later, Carl didn’t have school, and Rick rarely had a shift (cops with young kids got first priority, not to mention widowers).  

So Rick bided his time and bit his nails (Carl wasn’t the only one picking up habits from Daryl), and when the night finally arrived he was so wound up he couldn’t eat much at dinner. Always attuned to everything he did, Daryl kept shooting looks his way, which Rick wouldn’t acknowledge. He suffered through _Independence Day_ on the television; Carl was into it, Daryl fell asleep. He’d been up since before dawn, he told Rick, so he could ramble through the woods by himself before he went in to tinker with engines all day. (In another life Rick wondered if Daryl could have been an engineer: he had a marvelously analytical brain and exceptional spatial thinking, not to mention how skilled he was with his hands. Rick knew. Rick knew firsthandwhat Daryl could do with his hands.)

With his kids finally in bed, Rick roused Daryl from the sofa and hustled him towards the bedroom. After waking up a bit, Daryl seemed just as eager to retire. In fact, his deft fingers went straight for Rick’s zipper in an act of assertiveness that nearly made Rick go _fuck it, let’s just get each other off._ But instead he carefully took Daryl’s hand in his, threading their fingers together, and said, lamely, “Funny story for ya.”

Daryl’s eyes were still glazed and he blew his breath out in frustration. “You gonna tell me a fucken bedtime story now, Grimes?”

“That’s right.” Rick wouldn’t let Daryl pull his hand away. “Just listen.”

Daryl shrugged with badly concealed irritation. “Fine.”

Christ, he was so sexy when he sulked.

“Me and Lori had some fun when we were younger, nothing crazy, but we did a bit of experimenting.”

Daryl looked nonplussed and not particularly interested.

“In bed, I guess you could say I was a little more, ah – _adventurous_ than she was, maybe.” Fleetingly he wondered if it was a betrayal to discuss what he’d had with Lori like this, but decided to go on because he was, so to speak, more the butt of this particular anecdote than she. “One night we came back from a party, we’d both been drinking – this was before Carl – and we started, you know, getting into it. I guess I was feeling a little wild, or something, because then I asked her if she wanted to fuck me with this big strap-on I’d bought.”

Daryl’s narrow eyes widened in shock.

“She was horrified, absolutely appalled at the idea,” Rick continued. “She made me throw it out, right then and there. Maybe I was a little relieved that she didn’t wanna go there, but I was disappointed, too.”

“Why’re you tellin me this?” Daryl’s voice was flat.

“I’m telling you because it’s something I’m ready to try. With you. I trust you.”

“You don’t have to.”

It wasn’t quite the reaction he was hoping for. “I want to,” he said. “If you do.”

“It aint right.” Daryl shook his head vehemently.

“What aint right?”

“It aint right that you should have to do it, just cos I can’t.”

“And I just told you, Daryl. I _want_ to do it. Nobody’s forcing me, least of all you.”

“Aint I?” Daryl said bitterly.

“ _No._ I get why you’d think of it as a punishment, something to be suffered. I do. But I promise you, it’s _not_ when you’re with someone you –” _Jesus Christ,_ he almost said “love” – “ _care about_ and you _want_ to do it with them.”

“I couldn’t hurt ya, Rick,” Daryl said, so earnestly that Rick’s heart turned over. “An’ believe me, it hurts.”

“It’s not supposed to,” Rick said patiently. “There are things you do – before – so it doesn’t have to hurt. It feels _good_.”

“You wouldn’t know,” Daryl snapped, “less you got a history you aint told me about.”

“People do it all the time,” Rick argued, “and you can’t tell me there are that many masochists in the world.”

“I just…” Daryl turned away. “I couldn’ live with myself if I hurt ya.”

“You _won’t._ You _couldn’t_ , Daryl. I promise.”

He put his hands on Daryl’s shoulders and forced him to turn around. Then he brought their foreheads together and stroked the back of Daryl’s neck. “ _I trust you._ ”

“If – ” suddenly the words poured out of Daryl in a rush – “Not from behind. Not standin up or facin the wall. An’ with the light on. I gotta be able to see your face, Rick, or I won’t be able ta do it.”

Rick loved him so much in that moment he had to do something or he would say it aloud. So he pressed his mouth to Daryl’s and put all his feelings into the kiss. _I love you so much, probably more than you’ll ever know. I want you to come deep inside me. I want you beside me every day for the rest of my life._

Daryl kissed him back, just as urgently. He shivered and clung to Rick and forced his tongue deep into his mouth the way Rick loved. They kissed like that for a long while, all slow and sinuous and languorous. Rick pulled away first. “So,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Daryl. “Guess we should…” His fingers drifted to his shirt buttons. Rick followed suit. It was strange and new, this mode of undressing. Usually they tore at each other’s clothes in the heat of it, locked in a desperate race to get the other stripped first. But now they were standing a few feet apart, solemnly taking off their own clothes, eyes locked on each other’s faces. It sent a shudder of fear and anticipation down Rick’s spine.

Daryl’s movements were agonizingly slow. Rick couldn’t tell if he was doing it deliberately or if he was just afraid. Probably the latter, judging by the look of schooled concentration on his face.

Finally they were both naked. They stared at each other across the invisible divide between them. There was nowhere to hide, not with the lamp casting its warm light across the room. He could see Daryl breathing hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His arms dangled limply like he didn’t know what to do with them. Rick wanted to go to him but his feet were rooted to the floor. So he kept on staring, looking, _seeing_ Daryl. Daryl was exposing a lot more than just his body in that moment. The fear, the trepidation, the _want_ were all displayed on his face with naked vulnerability.

At last Daryl broke free, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. He was turned slightly away from Rick, leaving the demons on his shoulder to glare menacingly. Rick tried to ignore them and sat next to him. “What should I…” Daryl trailed off.

“C’mere.” Wrapping an arm around him, Rick bore them down onto the bed so they were lying on their sides facing one another. He edged his leg between Daryl’s tensely clasped thighs until they were flush together, and he rocked lightly against the other man. The sudden grinding together of their erections did something to dispel the initial tension of the moment. Daryl placed a hand at the small of his back and thrust hard against him, circling his hips in a sensation Rick found maddeningly arousing.

“What do I do now?” Daryl whispered.

Rick pulled away (his body whimpered in protest) and rummaged in his bedside table until he found what he was looking for. Then he rolled back to Daryl and displayed the small bottle on the palm of his head.

“’S that…?”

“Yeah,” Rick said. A line was forming between Daryl’s brows and Rick squirmed at the prospect of having to explain what came next. “Hold out your hand,” he ordered, and Daryl complied. Rick squirted a generous dollop of lube on to Daryl’s fingertips.

“Oh,” said Daryl, blue irises darkening. “ _Oh._ So I…”

“Yeah. Let me show you.” With a decent show of confidence bolstered by the amount of time he had spent furtively googling this very process, Rick guided Daryl’s fingers between his legs.

Daryl’s face was such a study in brow-furrowed concentration that Rick almost laughed, but then, ever so cautiously, Daryl began to nudge his forefinger into his body and he couldn’t help clenching against the intrusion. Immediately Daryl froze, too, looking stricken.

“It’s okay,” Rick forced out, his voice sounding odd to his own ears. “Here…” he shifted on to his back, pulling Daryl so he was on top of him. “It’s okay.”

He took a deep breath, and as he exhaled Daryl slid a finger all the way inside him. It didn’t hurt, not exactly, but it felt _foreign,_ strange. Rick wiggled his hips a little bit, trying to get used to it. In the warm lamplight, he could see every line of concern etched across Daryl’s forehead.

“Keep going,” he breathed, but Daryl didn’t do exactly that. Instead he scooted down further along Rick’s body and enveloped his cock in his mouth. Rick jerked in surprise. _What the_ –

But Daryl was more intuitive than he let on, because he’d taken advantage of Rick’s distraction to add a second finger to the first. He licked up and down the rigid length as he began to stretch the fingers inside him.

For a man who hadn’t been with anyone sober in fourteen years, Daryl Dixon was, well, _smooth._

Daryl lifted his mouth off. “You okay?” he asked, his usual growl softened to something gentler.

“Yeah, I think I – I think I’m-”

“You ready?”

That low voice made Rick’s toes curl into the bedsheet. “Yeah.”

The sudden absence of Daryl’s fingers registered as a pang of loss. Rick’s breath was coming in short, harsh pants as Daryl kissed his way back up his body, darting his tongue into his navel, catching a nipple in his teeth. Then he paused, his lips hovering above Rick’s throat. “I aint got-” Dismayed, his eyes found Rick’s.

“Don’t care.” Rick tugged urgently at his hair. “I’m clean. You?”

“Better be,” Daryl said.

“So…” He heard a faint pop and looked between their bodies to see Daryl hastily rubbing lube along the length of his cock. _Christ,_ said a voice inside Rick’s head, _how is_ that _going to fit in_ me _?_

Daryl was nudging Rick’s legs further apart with his knee and settling heavily between them, his body solid and warm. Positioning himself ever so carefully against Rick’s entrance, he lavished wet, distracted kisses along his collarbone. Rick wanted to see him, wanted to be able to look into his eyes at the exact moment of joining, becoming, but then Daryl was inside him and his eyes slammed shut of their own accord.

It was like no other feeling. Rick’s eyes flooded with tears.

Daryl’s hands were cupping his face, the rough pads of this thumbs stroking along his damp cheeks. Rick forced his lids open and stared into those fathomless blue eyes.

“Tell me to stop,” Daryl rasped. Voice whiskey rough.

“No,” said Rick. “God, fuck, no.” Because the burning heat he was feeling was all Daryl, wrapped around him, inside of him. He dug his fingernails into the hard flesh of Daryl’s ass, urging him to move.

Slowly, cautiously, Daryl pulled himself almost all the way out and thrust in again. Made slippery with lube, their bodies slapped noisily together.

“Motherfucker,” Daryl panted. He buried his face against Rick’s shoulder.

It was like all the blood in his veins had been replaced with gasoline. And when Daryl thrust even harder, he flicked a lit match into Rick’s very core. Flames ignited inside him, racing outward from the place where their bodies were joined to his fingers, his toes, the ends of his hair.

Daryl’s movements became smoother, creating a steady, mounting friction. Rick raked his fingernails up and down his back, over the scars and pitted burn marks. And then Daryl seized him by the hips, practically bending his body in half, and held him fast. Immobilized, Rick couldn’t return Daryl’s thrusts but only arch against them, and suddenly he was lifted into a new kind of pleasure altogether. The angle, the pressure, the nameless sensations flung him far into another orbit where there was no room for thinking, only feeling. “Don’t. Fucking. Stop,” he told Daryl.  

Their eyes locked. Daryl’s mouth was open, he looked almost astonished, and his blue eyes glinted with something nameless as he brought a hand between them, taking hold of Rick’s cock and coaxing him ever closer to the edge.

“Daryl…” Rick had time to gasp, before he plunged over it.

Daryl collapsed into magnificent ruins on top of him, shaking and spasming and trembling, his mouth landing over Rick’s more by accident than design, but Rick drank him in anyway, forgetting to breathe as they shuddered through the climax together.

They lay boneless and spent. Every so often one of them would start trembling again with the aftershocks, and the other would cradle him through it until his own tremors began and then they would switch roles, the cradler and the cradled.

It hurt when Daryl finally pulled out of him. Rick’s body curled protectively in on itself. Daryl stretched out on his side next to him, and brought a hand to his trembling flank.

“You alright?”

Rick stared at Daryl, hair plastered to his brow, eyes heavy-lidded, body glistening with sweat and exertion. The hard planes of his stomach. His sharp, jutting hipbones. The quiescent curve of his cock. _Yeah,_ he was going to say. _Are you?_ But what came out of his mouth was something else entirely. “I love you.”

Fuck. There was a second there, maybe, when he could have taken it back, apologized, blamed the stupid euphoria of release. But he didn’t. He clamped his mouth shut. It was the truth, and if Daryl didn’t want to hear it, well…

Even with the lights on, he couldn’t read Daryl’s face. The eyes, the mouth, nothing gave him any clues.

And then Daryl rolled into him and kissed him deeply, his lips firm. His stubble scratched against Rick’s jaw, a sensation he’d come to covet. He felt Daryl pressed against his leg, already hard again.

“What the hell’d ya do to me?” Daryl breathed against his mouth. “You witch me, Grimes? Christ, I want ya so bad, all the fucken time now... There aint no one else.”

Daryl pulled back slightly and gave him that dear crooked smile with his whole heart in his eyes.

 

xxx

 

At long last Pat Garrett backed Billy into a corner, and there was nowhere left for the Kid to run. Before Garrett hauled Billy off to jail, the two of them sat down and had a friendly meal together, so the story went. Then Billy was locked up to wait for the noose, but of course he escaped in his usual spectacular fashion and left the lawman grinding his teeth in fury.

Not a couple weeks later, when they met again, Garrett pulled a gun and shot Billy dead with two bullets. It had been dark ( _“¿quién es? ¿quién es?”_ Billy had cried in fear), and he didn’t see the face of his attacker until the first bullet was already in his chest.

But maybe, Rick thought, resting his face against Daryl’s back as his lover slept on, there was a version of the story where Garrett never marched up and shot Billy. Maybe there was a version where they both lived. Maybe they left the lights on. Maybe they fell in love. Stranger things had happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter last chapter! (It'll be extra long)
> 
> As always, I so love hearing from you guys. Your feedback has been all sorts of wonderful.


	12. Tango Til They're Sore

_One day I’ll kill you_ , Daryl had promised Johnny B Goode.  _I’ll put two bullets in your brain an’ you’ll be dead afore you hit the ground._

But as he laid on his bed in another shitty motel room that night, listening to Merle’s snores, he wondered if it might not be simpler to put the bullet in his own brain and call it a fucking day.

He felt like a festering wound, lying there on his stomach (he wouldn’t be able to sit or sleep proper for days to come). Like the last sparks of life left over after his ma burnt up, after Merle up and left, after his da flayed his back open, had all been leeched away.

His ass was still leaking blood. Merle could hardly bring himself to look at him, all day his eyes would go skittering away from the raw despair writ all over his baby brother’s face.

Daryl didn’t believe in god, or heaven, but he did believe in hell. Weren’t no saints for sinners like him, no momma was gonna pray for his soul.

It was like dying in the desert, a relentless sun bleaching his bones dry. Cry for water, all you hear is buzzards circling above you. Beg for mercy, and laughter fills the sky.

As a kid he’d heard the story of the Cherokee Rose, the flower that bloomed where the Indians’ tears fell for all the ones who’d died. Sometimes he felt like those Cherokee war dead had got in his soul, too.

So if killing yourself sent you to hell – well, he was already in it, wasn’t he? So why waste a damn bullet.

 

xxx

 

But that didn’t stop him from turning his gun over and over in his hands and wondering if today would be the day he pulled the trigger. That’s right, he had a gun now. Aint no way for a street fighting man, but Merle had got it for him, saying sometimes you needed more’n just your fists or your knife. Daryl occasionally wondered if Merle meant for him to turn it on himself, like Japanese seppuku, to prove once again that _Dixons aint fags_ , but no, that couldn’t be right. Merle said he loved him, that he was the only one who’d ever love him.

But that didn’t stop him from turning the gun over and over in his hands each night and thinking _tomorrow, maybe. Tomorrow I’ll do it._

 

xxx

 

Surprisingly, it was his da of all people who stayed his hand.

Six months had passed since Johnny, six months of teetering on the brink of oblivion. The worst six months of his life, probably, and they had some fierce competition. Him and Merle were skint again. They were always skint, but this time they were, as Merle said, “real down’n’out,” which meant no money for drugs or booze or women.

And Daryl, who was afraid of sex and indifferent to drugs and appreciative of alcohol only in the sense that it brought him that much closer to his oblivion, suddenly remembered the money he’d hidden in the wall paneling of his bedroom, years ago.

He hadn’t had time to grab it after the vicious, and final, fight with his old man that sent him crashing away into the dark, bloody and defiant, swearing never to come back. Dough wasn’t much, anyway, maybe forty or fifty bucks, but it would get them drunk or loaded.

I’ll go, Merle had offered, but Daryl shook his head. You wouldn’t know how ta find it. I’m quieter, I’ll sneak in an’ out afore the old man ever knows I was there. Gimme the bike.

Riding the Triumph was freedom, but it was freedom shortlived. Him and Merle, they never got far, no matter how long they drifted for. Wasn’t like he’d ever left the goddam state of Georgia. So it didn’t take him long to drive back to the dilapidated hovel they’d called home ever since his ma burnt up in the first one. And the ride hadn’t been damn near long enough for him to make up his mind – grab the dough and go back to Merle; grab the dough and disappear, strike out west for California or somethin; grab the dough and buy the steepest bottle of whiskey he could find, throw it down, and shoot himself in the head.

Daryl crept in through the back, a sort of lean-to where the old man made his moonshine. He’d done this thousands of times before – even in the dark, he knew the location of every creaky board, every rusted hinge.

He paused in the kitchen, listening. The house was silent. The hated place washed him in its stink of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Friday afternoon, Will Dixon had probably started his pubcrawl hours ago. Even so, Daryl wasn’t taking any chances. Catlike, he slunk noiselessly down the dank hallway and paused at the foot of the stairs when he heard a low rattle, rasping and wet, coming from the living room.

Hand drifting to the gun now hidden at his waist, Daryl peered round the doorframe.

And there he was, the monster himself, sprawled on the sofa like a beached whale. The nasty rattling sound was coming from him. It was him breathing, Daryl realized belatedly.

The old man looked like shit. Yellow with jaundice, swollen belly straining against stained undershirt, face a network of burst blood vessels, drunk as a fucking skunk on the Fourth of July.

He oughta grab the money and go, Daryl knew that, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the bloated wreck wheezing away in front of him. “Hey asshole,” he said, nudging the old man’s leg with his toe. Will Dixon didn’t stir.

Daryl circled the sofa, eyes fixed on his da’s face. “Asshole!” he said louder. “Hey, asshole! You in there, motherfucker? Can ya hear me, you sonuvabitch?” He pointed the gun at his da’s forehead and imagined what it would feel like to pull the trigger. What the back of the old man’s head would look like, oozing blood and brains.

In that second, Will Dixon jerked up, eyes wide and face rigid. Terrified, Daryl nearly fired the gun on reflex. And then, just as suddenly, his da went limp and crumpled back against the sofa. After getting his breath back, Daryl laughed weakly. “Almost had ya pegged there, old man,” he told him.

Took Daryl several minutes to realize his da wasn’t making those rattling sounds deep in his throat any more. He was completely silent, and a greyish tinge was creeping over his sallow cheeks.

Holding his breath, Daryl tentatively reached over and pushed two fingers against his da’s neck. He recoiled. The skin felt heavy and damp, like clay. The old man was dead.

He stood there stupidly for a moment, staring at the corpse. First he felt nothing at all, then a lightness took root in his belly. Like electricity, it spread through his body til he felt the ends of his hair crackling.

It was elation.

If there was a twinge of anything else, he didn’t notice. The old man had made his choice years ago, the first time he took his belt to his youngest son and called him a no good worthless little shit he wished he could shove right back up his momma’s pussy.

He knew better than to touch the body, to smash its head like an overripe melon or riddle it with bullets. All he could do was stare down at it, vibrating with a fierce joy that straightened his spine and lifted his chin.

“Rot in hell,” he hissed. “You sonuvabitch asshole cocksuckin cunt motherfucker.”

Then he bounded up the stairs to the small attic room he’d once shared with Merle. Instinctively he went to one of the wall panels to the right of the busted old wardrobe, and when he pulled it back it was… empty. Empty but for a couple beads and rocks and other tokens he musta hid there as a kid.

The money was gone. Of course it fucking was. His da had been like a goddam bloodhound.

Fuming, Daryl clomped back downstairs. He was going to pass the corpse without a second glance, but then he remembered something.

Disgusted at the feel of dead flesh under his hand, Daryl reached into the old man’s pocket and pulled out the pocket watch, an antique, an heirloom, passed along through generations of Dixons granda to daddy to son. He tucked it inside his jacket.

He jumped back on the Triumph and could have whooped with joy at the feel of the sun on his face and the wind whipping through his hair. The lightest he’d felt in years, maybe ever. He wasn’t gonna kill himself. Opting out was for cowards. No, he was gonna pawn the watch, and then he was gonna go back to Merle with the dough and him and Merle were gonna get loaded and drunk off their asses and celebrate til fucking dawn.

Once he’d made it to the highway, he stopped at the first payphone he saw. Put in an anonymous call to the police, reporting an awful stink round the old Dixon place. Then he went home to his brother.

“Didja get his boots?” said Merle.

 

xxx

 

Prison suited Merle.

He was practically glowing with good health, teeth gleaming white in his face, swaggering with the pride of being top dog round the blocks.

Daryl had expected this, it was why he’d nearly turned back round soon as he pulled up. He’d been leaning against his truck, having a cigarette in the car park outside the prison, when he heard someone shouting his name. He squinted, and there was T-Dog, hurrying towards him.

“What the hell you doin here?” said T after they’d clasped hands.

“M’brother,” Daryl grunted, offering the other man a cigarette.

“Just paid my good ol’ daddy a visit,” T said, lighting up. “Who’da known our people was enjoyin the same hospitality inside?”

“Fucken figures,” Daryl grumbled. “How ya been, man?”

“Same old,” T said. “Aint heard much from you lately, brother. Left a message on your machine the other day.”

“Sorry.” Daryl flicked a bit of ash off his sleeve. “Aint been home.”

“Poaching off season again?”

“Nah. Just busy.” He was beginning to feel tense and skittish at this line of questioning. Sure he’d been _busy,_ he’d fucked Rick Grimes three times in as many days, and his abs and thighs ached from this new kind of exercise. Their slippery bodies twined together like serpents, drunk on sex, craving more, lying naked on his front as Rick kissed down his spine, shaking sweaty hair from his eyes so he wouldn’t miss a damn thing.

Yeah, he’d been _busy,_ his brain was fit to explode with how stupid and smitten he’d become.

“There’s something you aint tellin me, man. Lookit you standin there, all alpha dog. C’mon then, who is she?” T was grinning at him and Daryl flinched. Visibly. “Right, aint I? You got somebody new.”

_Shit_ , Daryl thought. T was the first friend he’d made in this strange new phase of his life, the kinda friend he never coulda made with Merle dripping poison in his ear all the time. And now he was gonna fucken filibuster it cos Rick’s imploring yet stern blue eyes were in his head and the man’s voice was filling his ears. _I’m sick of playing charades, Daryl. Tired of lying. We’re acting like damn kids._

“Yeah,” he said resignedly. “There’s someone.”

“Aha!” T whooped and put up his hand for a high-five, which Daryl returned a bit limply. “So you gonna tell me who?”

“A cop.”

He watched T’s broad, dark face crack open with incredulous laughter. “A _cop_? You, Mr. I-Aint-Met-A-Law-I-Won’t-Break, you’re seein a _cop_?”

“The irony aint lost on me,” Daryl said drily. He dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his boot.

“Bet it was one of them from that day with Beth, am I right?” said T. Daryl nodded heavily. Getting closer. T screwed up his face. “ _Grimes_ ,” he said at last.

Daryl took a step back in shock.

“Right again!” T slapped him hard on the back. “Fucken _Grimes_ , man. Only dude I can think of who might scare me more’n you. Deadly as Dillinger, that one. Got a reputation.”

You coulda knocked him over with a feather, right then. He wanted to run his mouth with a bunch of pansy-ass questions, like _how’d you guess_ and _it don’t bother you none_ and _you aint gonna tell nobody, right_? But T had just said that Daryl still scared him and there weren’t nuthin poofy bout scaring a man like T, so Daryl just narrowed his eyes and tried to keep looking mean as he nodded thanks to T-Dog’s congratulations.

“Come inta Atlanta this weekend,” T said as they parted ways. “Hell, bring Grimes, long as he leaves the badge at home.”

Seeing T shot whiskey courage into his veins, which was how he’d grown a pair and marched into the prison and now found himself sitting across from Merle at a plastic table in the visitors’ room.

“Only got four months left ta go,” Merle was telling him. “Three if I mind my manners an’ kiss the right asses. Then it’s back to you an’ me, baby, livin the good life. I was thinkin maybe we oughta strike out fer the coast this time-”

“Hey Merle,” Daryl interrupted. “You been keepin up with the news? Readin a paper?”

“Aint no news could interest me, little bro, less it’s legalized prostitution.”

“’Member that time ya sold me to a man for a bit a’meth?”

Merle stared at him. Like he swore, they hadn’t spoke about that day in fourteen years.

“Shot him a while back. Two bullets in the head, like I swore I’d do. He’s dead.”

“Darlena-” Merle glanced around furtively. “If you in trouble-”

“Aint in no trouble, Merle. Nearly got a fucken medal and a key to the city.”

“We-ell, lookey there. Congratu-fucken-lations, Darlena.”

Daryl cracked his knuckles impatiently. “Aint the point. What I’m sayin, things is different now.”

“No they aint, baby brother. Not fer folk like us. You wanna let them townfolk make a pet outta you, go right ahead, but nobody ever really cares about ya, remember that. Aint nobody ever gonna care about you, baby, cept-”

“That aint true anymore. I got somebody now.”

“Whaddya mean, ya _got somebody_?”

“You aint the only one who gives a damn.”

Merle’s flinty eyes narrowed. “So you find some hot little number who’s willin to suck yer dick, that aint love, Darlena. That’s-”

“Says he loves me.”

The cat was out of its proverbial fucking bag before he had a chance to think it through.

“ _He_?” Merle repeated, disbelieving, nostrils flaring. “Baby you best tell me my ears is deceivin me, because I coulda swore you said-”

“Yeah.” If Merle wanted to do flinty, Daryl could do flinty. He gave his brother a look full of stormclouds. “ _Him._ ”

“Lawd.” Merle laughed feebly, slapping his hand against the table. “Good one, Darlena. You really had me on.”

“Aint jokin.” His pulse wasn’t even racing, and his palms were desert-dry on his jeans. Almost like Rick was there sitting next to him, a warm body and a bottleful of _I don’t give a damn_ courage. “So say whatever it is you gotta say, an’ then I’ll be on my way.”

There was nothing much new. Merle soliloquized at length, florid as a poet, about how he’d raised Daryl better than to suck the first dick somebody stuck in his face, how Dixons weren’t fags and anybody what said otherwise would get their nuts fed to wild dogs, how Daryl was outta his fucken mind and Merle would beat some sense into him soon as he walked out these gates. Daryl’s mind drifted – to Rick, and what they’d done that morning before Rick went to the station. How smoothly their bodies fit together, like they’d been doing it for years. How much he loved making Rick come, with that mad I-can-see-for-miles look in his eye, and how much he loved coming inside Rick, where it was tight and hot and Rick’s body fit his cock like a glove.

“So whaddya got ta say fer yerself?” Merle cut into his thoughts, apparently having run out of steam. Good thing, too, cos he was starting to get hard in his pants at the thought of Rick.

“’Member when we usedta make a few bucks playin William Tell?” he said abruptly.

“Shore do,” said Merle. “But what the hell has that got to do with you bein a goddam fag now?”

“How’d it feel?” Daryl asked. “Waitin for me to shoot the glass offa yer head or the cigarette outta yer mouth?”

“Felt like waitin to get blasted ass over tits,” Merle said, then added grudgingly, “but you was always a crack shot, baby, so after enough rounds I figgered I’d live to see another tomorra.”

“That’s how I feel now. With him.”

“Aint that sweet. Oughta put that ’un on a Hallmark card.” Merle rubbed his face, looking old and deflated now all the swagger had left his system. “Blame myself, ta be honest.”

“Blame yerself for _what_?”

“That you turned out like this. I been away too much, left you alone too long. That man, ya say he’s dead now, he wouldna took ya and made ya his bitch if it wasn’t fer me. This here? ‘S the Almighty’s punishment for my sins.”

Daryl snorted. “Get off yer high horse, Merle, ya know I don’t go in fer that fire an’ brimstone shit.”

“’S all my fault,” Merle said tragically.

“Aint no one’s _fault_ ,” Daryl said impatiently. “Don’t work like that. Hell, Merle, this aint even me comin here ta confess I gone queer. Don’t rightly know what I am, jus’ that me an’ Rick, it’s somethin different an’ I think he’s it fer me.”

“Rick?” Merle’s lip twisted in distaste.

“He’s a cop,” Daryl said, feeling a small bubble of hilarity rising in his chest. “Sheriff’s Deputy, ta be precise.”

“You gotta be kidden me!” Merle howled like he’d been dealt a deathblow.

“An’ he got two kids,” Daryl added for good measure.

It was probly a good thing the guard called time just then, cos Merle looked positively apoplectic now. “Visit ya again soon,” he told his brother. “Meantime, you keep on fightin the law.”

And he swaggered out of there like 007.

 

xxx

 

Per usual, he swung round the corner to park the bike some distance from the Grimes house. Cutting through the backyard, he spotted Carl crouched behind Lori’s hydrangea bushes, one of Daryl’s cigarettes in his mouth, fumbling to get it lit.

_Hell_ , he thought. _Rick’ll have my fucken head for this._

Stalking silently through the grass, he was at Carl’s elbow before he spoke. “Whatcha got there, kid?” he drawled.

Carl jumped. “Shit!” he exclaimed, _Guilty_ stamped across his forehead. “I mean, shoot,” he corrected himself hastily. “Daryl, I I I found them by mistake, I wasn’t actually gonna smoke it or anything, I was just-”

“Easy,” Daryl said. He dropped lightly to the ground next to Carl and crossed his legs. “I aint mad.”

“Y-y-you aint?”

“ _Aren’t_ ,” Daryl corrected. “And nope. Go on, hand me the pack.” Apologetically, Carl handed over his spare pack, messily torn open. Daryl fished another cigarette out and lit it with a flourish. “Yer a big kid. Let’s have one together, you an’ me.”

Carl’s face flushed with pride. “You’re _so_ much cooler than my dad,” he confided disloyally, sticking the cig back between his lips. Daryl held the lighter for him, explaining, “You gotta inhale, deep as ya can.”

Carl started coughing up a storm and Daryl pounded him on the back. “Nice an’ easy,” he said. “There ya go.”

Carl’s face was crinkled in distaste. “It’s kind of gross,” he said.

“You’ll get used ta it.” Daryl took a philosophic puff on his own cigarette. “Just gotta get the smoke in yer system, like.”

Another drag had Carl coughing again. “I don’t think I like it,” he said when he got his breath back. “It’s making my stomach hurt.”

“Tough shit,” Daryl told him, trying to keep a straight face. “Steal a man’s cigarettes, you gotta do him the civility of smokin one. S’part of the code.”

“What code?” Reluctantly, Carl stuck the smoke back in his mouth and puffed miserably away at it.

“Code fer dangerous folk, gunslingers like me an’ yer da.”

“My dad don’t smoke,” Carl pointed out.

“Yer dad _doesn’t_ smoke, but he’s sure as hell dangerous.” From the corner of his eye, Daryl saw Carl looking a bit pale and sick, but still stubborn as heck.

“If you know how to talk right, then why don’t you?” the kid said, all smart-ass.

“Am what I am. Aint tryna pass myself off like a college professor. Now smoke up,” he ordered. “Give ya ten bucks if ya finish afore me.”

Carl applied himself like a man sent to dig his own grave. He smoked feverishly, growing paler and sweatier. Then he swallowed hard and took the smoke out of his mouth. “Daryl, I think I-”

Then he threw up onto the grass, narrowly missing his own shoes.

Daryl patted him on the back, more gently this time. “Get it all up, kid,” he advised. “Don’t want none of it left in ya.”

“Why’d you make me do that?” Carl demanded when he stopped retching.

“I didn’t make ya do shit, kid,” Daryl told him. “Now, I’m guessin ya won’t be fixen ta try another puff anytime soon?”

“God no,” Carl groaned.

“Good. Then there aint no need for yer da ta know bout this. Now go on, get the hose an’ clean up yer mess. An’ Carl,” he added, going to the door, “stay outta my shit.”

 

xxx

 

He found Beth inside with Judith. He claimed the baby and breathed in her good clean scent like buttermilk and flowers, chasing the last of the prison from his senses.

Beth had a dopey expression on her face when he finally got round to taking notice of her. “ _What_?” he growled.

Beth giggled. “It’s _cute_ ,” she said. “You and Judy. She’s still so tiny, and you all big and tough-”

“You sayin I look like an axe murderer?”

“You’re too easy to tease,” she told him. “Prickly as a bear.”

He batted that away. Standing there, hair glowing in the late afternoon sun, she reminded him more than ever of the junkie hooker he’d fallen for as a kid. Made him sad. All that, it felt so far away now. Like it was covered in a fine dusty film and the first thing he could remember proper was locking eyes with Rick Grimes in the middle of the woods that day.

“Hey!” she snapped her fingers in front of his face and she was Beth again. “I can always tell when you’re thinking about Rick, you know.”

“Aw, shaddup girl,” he grunted, not really meaning it.  “You go on home early, I got the kids.”

“Carl’s hiding from me again,” she said, gathering her purse. “You can tell him the coast is clear now.”

“Yeah.” He hugged her briefly, Judy sandwiched between them. Touching Beth, it was getting easier and easier, and he found he didn’t mind when she kissed his cheek too. She was the loveliest person he’d ever known.

After Beth drove away, he heard Carl sneak in through the back door and let the kid make a clean break for his room. Rick probly wouldn’t much approve of his methods, but he was damn sure the kid wouldn’t be lighting up again for years to come.

_Why d’you give a shit?_ said Merle. _Aint like he yours._

_Because he’s Rick’s._ Carl and Judy _were_ Rick, in their cerulean eyes and stubborn mouths. And what was Rick, he loved more’n himself.

_The hell for?_

_Cos Rick says he loves me_. Weren’t just a fluke, something what slipped out after they’d both come like the Charge of the fucken Light Brigade that first time, cos Rick said it again the next morning, and then at night, then three times the next day and again this morning before he went to work. Daryl had kept count. Rick said it like he didn’t expect to hear a response, like he wasn’t disappointed when Daryl’s throat closed over every time and he just kissed him stead of saying it back. He didn’t know the words for how he felt about Rick because Rick was tenderness and hope where everything else was practiced indifference and a bleak eye on the horizon. Was that what _I love you_ meant? A drop of water in the desert, rain in a dying man’s eye. Like tears. He knew how hard it was to cry. Harder than dying.

 

xxx

 

He was there to greet Rick with Judith in his arms. Rick gave him that damn Hollywood smile and kissed him, nice and sweet, just a taste of want, as they cradled the baby between them.

They ate dinner together, like a family, _as_ a family. And then they indulged Carl and watched the third Lord of the Rings movie. Daryl hadn’t seen the first two and could barely keep his eyes open. Judith slept on his chest and her quiet breathing lulled him. Movies always put him to sleep, he didn’t have the patience to sit still and pay attention to something two-dimensional, so his body overcompensated and tried to do something useful with the time. But Carl kept digging a bony elbow into his ribs and saying, “Daryl, you’re missing the best part.” So he blinked owlishly at the TV and couldn’t help thinking the hobbits seemed really fucken gay even though he was probably part-something gay himself to be sitting here with the man he was probably gonna fuck later and his teenage son. But then when the two of them, the hobbits, were trapped in that erupting volcano and the one said to the other, “I’m glad you’re with me, here at the end of all things” or some shit like that, he accidentally locked eyes with Rick over the top of Carl’s head. The look in those eyes turned his cheeks pink and Carl made a barfing sound at them.

 

xxx

 

After Carl had gone to bed, him and Rick sat down at the kitchen table together. Rick never pushed him, never pressed him to talk before he was ready, just sat there waiting patiently with his fingers steepled together.

“Saw Merle,” he said at last. “Didn’ exactly give his blessing, but there aint nuthin he can do.”

“And when he gets out?” Rick asked quietly.

“Same holds. Aint no one, not even Merle, gonna turn me round.”

But Rick didn’t look satisfied. “You gonna move in here for good when he’s out?”

“Thinkin bout it.”

“Daryl-”

_Jesus Christ._ “I done told _two_ people today, Rick,” he snapped. “Reckon I filled my goddam quota.”

Rick sighed heavily. “There’s no _quota._ ”

“One day at a time. You promised.” He hated the petulance in his voice. He a grown-ass man, not a brat like Carl. “I said I don’t wanna call myself yer _boyfriend_ , it don’t sit right with me. Maybe I move in, maybe I don’t, but I aint gonna haul ass an’ get hitched in some northern Yank chapel so we can settle down like _Leave it to_ fucken _Beaver_.”

Rick laughed at him, which he deserved.

“We aint gonna keep it a secret,” he conceded at last. “Sorry Rick, but that’s the best I can do fer now. Cos what we got, it’s for _us_ , ya know, I aint wantin to share it with nobody but you.” He was babbling like a damn girl with all this _us us us_ talk. So he toughened it up, adding, “That other stuff, it just aint me, man.”

“I know.” Rick reached across the table and laced their fingers together. Daryl squeezed fiercely until he heard bones creak. Rick winced a little but gave him the private, secretive smile that made him feel like melting.

“Here.” He pulled his hand away so he could reach inside his jacket. One more thing. He tossed a battered paperback book onto the table between them. “Mighta stole this a few weeks ago.”

“I thought you might’ve.” Rick smirked and thumbed through it. _The Sound and the Fury._ “Never got round to finishing it myself. How does it end?”

“Like shit,” Daryl said. He was still rankled. “Damn kid, he fucken offs himself. Doesn’t hafta, but he does anyway.” He stared down at the table, running his finger along the grain of the wood, and continued more softly. “His da gives him his grandad’s watch, right, an’ he goes mad with it, thinks he can stop time. Go back an’ fix what went wrong in the past, what’s hauntin him. But he can’t. He can’t fix it. So the stupid sonuvabitch jumps in the river an’ drowns.” He was pathetic, shaking when he looked up at Rick. “Kid was a damn coward. He shoulda taken that curst watch an’ sold it an’ bought himself a bottle a’whiskey instead. But he was stupid, Rick, he didn’ see, an’ there was no one to tell him take it easy buddy, this aint the end of the world. An’ now he’s dead.”

“But you’re not,” Rick said steadily, his eyes more intense than Daryl had ever seen them, a deep cobalt. “You’re not dead. You’re here. With me.”

He tried to breathe, but it caught in his throat like his da’s death-rattle. “That’s cos I had the sense to pawn the damn watch,” he managed. No way Rick coulda known what he was talking about, but his kind, lined face was filled with understanding anyway, and Daryl was grateful.

And then he couldn’t take it anymore, he was standing up and walking to the bedroom and Rick was following him. He couldn’t speak and there wasn’t any need. He kissed Rick hard enough to bruise. Their teeth knocked together and at Rick’s little gasp he slid his tongue into the other man’s mouth. Then he pushed him back on the bed, roughly, and covered his body with his own. The more places their bodies touched, the more alive he felt, and the farther away from the kid lying cold and dead at the bottom of the river. That weren’t him, not anymore.

He _tore_ at Rick’s clothes, wanting to rend the fabric with his bare hands. The buttons made him angry and he growled deep in his throat as he fumbled them open, one at a time. Rick was getting in the way, too, sliding his palms up his shirt and pinching his nipple hard. Daryl swore and cuffed his hand away, but Rick wasn’t backing down this time. He reached for Daryl’s belt, and suddenly there were so many hands and arms tangled together it was a wonder they managed to shed their clothes at all.

Naked, he clung to Rick and hissed at the sensation of their bare cocks brushing together. He crumbled so easy these days, he was like sandstone. Here he was, trembling again; he hadn’t trembled since the first time, at least not from fear. But he felt raw and peeled back tonight.

“Hey.” Rick steadied him. “Something’s wrong.”

“No.” He sucked at his favorite spot on Rick’s neck, right above his pulse. Buying time, steeling himself. Then he brought his forehead to rest against Rick’s. “I wanna try it your way this time,” he said huskily.

“What d’you mean?”

He growled in frustration, lightly head-butting Rick. “Your way,” he insisted. “Want you inside a’me.”  

“Daryl-” Rick’s eyes were wide, he looked upset. What the fuck did _he_ have to be upset about?

“Don’ fucken _Daryl_ me,” he snapped. “Ya heard what I said now are you gonna do it or not?”

“But when we first – you said-”

“I know what I fucken said. I’m changin my mind, jus’ this once.”

“Is this because of Merle?” Rick demanded. “Did he say something? Cos I swear to you, I only want what you’re willing to give me.”

“Aint about Merle.” Rick, damn him, he never let him off easy. Always making him _explain_ shit. “’S not even fer you. It’s fer me. I’m tryin… I’m tryna make new, unnerstand?”

“I’m trying to,” Rick said. “But-”

“Don’t wanna be afraid of _nuthin_ ,” he insisted. “Wasn’ afraid of much ta begin with, then I met you. We been through stuff. But this, this _thing_ -”

“C’mere,” Rick said.

He let Rick lay him down on the bed, all gentle-like. But he didn’t want gentle, he wanted it over with quick. Propped against the pillows, he chewed his thumbnail and watched Rick move about the room, getting the lube and turning the lamp on brighter. He squeezed his legs tight together. Rick began to crawl up his body, hooking his hands beneath his knees. “Open em for me,” he whispered, voice like honey. “Please.” Slowly Daryl complied, allowing Rick to guide his legs open, spread them almost uncomfortably wide to make room for his body. He ran his hot tongue over Daryl’s balls and along the tense length of his cock, and continued his journey upward, tongue dipping into his navel, over his stomach, flicking over one nipple and then the other, along his jaw until finally reaching his mouth. Rick kissed him pliant, deep and open-mouthed and dirty, his busy tongue tracing the outline of Daryl’s lips before plunging back in to do a rough two-step tango with his own tongue.

He was panting hard now, his body opening up to Rick of its own accord. His arms crept round the man’s back and he tangled their legs together as he bucked his hips upward, wanting, wanton, seeking that delicious filthy friction.

And Rick gave it to him, moving his body so their erections rubbed against one another with agonizing slowness. It got him all hot and bothered, that, so he lost track of where Rick’s hands were until he felt a cool, slippery finger prodding lightly against his entrance. He flinched and slapped the hand away.

“’S the matter?” Rick was all concern and solicitousness, pulling back a little and placing his hands on either side where Daryl could see them. “Hurt?”

“Nah.” It hadn’t. “Weird.”

“Sure is. ‘Specially for us good ol’ boys,” Rick said, his voice deep and intimate, like this was just another secret him and Daryl shared, not Daryl making an ass of himself at the very thing he had demanded. “Wanna let me try again?”

“Nah.” Daryl pulled his lower lip into his mouth and bit down. “Rather ya just did it,” he said finally. “Don’t know if I can do with all this build-up.”

“I’d be afraid of hurting you.”

“You won’t.” As soon as he said it, he knew it was true. Rick, all tempest-tossed eyes and worried forehead, was afraid of hurting him. Didn’t _want_ to hurt him. So even if he did, even if he tore his body in two, he wouldn’t, couldn’t, hurt him.

His fingers found the bottle of lube and he poured a generous amount into his palm. He rubbed it all along the length of Rick’s cock, completely coating him with slick til he was like greased lightning.

“Daryl…”

“Rick. Please.” It was their special word for when they knew they were asking something difficult of the other. “ _Please._ ”

He curled his fingers into the bedsheets and stared down between their bodies as Rick placed the head of his cock at his entrance. “Lookit me,” he growled, and Rick did. What he saw there frightened him, because Rick’s eyes held a vast ocean of love he could never deserve, not a dirty no-good punk kid like him. But he’d got this far, he had to try. “ _Please_ ,” he repeated.

“I love you,” Rick said, and entered him.

His whole body went rigid, it was like being struck by lightning all over again, but this was one of those giant monster bolts, the kind that brought down trees. He could smell burning, practically. But it hadn’t killed him. He didn’t leave his body. His heart was still pounding against his ribs.

And it didn’t hurt, not exactly, not the way it had before and the way he feared it would again. He couldn’t speak, though.

“Daryl? Do you need me to stop? Tell me if you want-”

“Want ya to _stay_ ,” he grated out, sandpaper on stone. Sensation was coming back, a slight burning and an odd feeling of _stretching_ , but then there was the steady pulsing heat between his legs that was Rick’s cock inside of him, filling him.

He seized Rick’s hips with his hands, some ancient instinct taking over. “Move,” he commanded.

And Rick did, withdrawing and then gliding smoothly back into him.

“Again,” he said, and Rick thrust a little harder this time.

“Again…”

This time Rock went deeper than before, bottoming out inside of him, and his mouth fell open in shock. Something was happening to him, something that was equal parts pleasure and frustration was erupting deep in his body. But his cock was still resting rigid on his belly, untouched. “… the hell was that?” he gasped, and Rick laughed lightly in his ear and said something that sounded like _state stimulation_ which made no damn sense at all but then, fuck, his cock hit that spot again and Daryl unraveled further.

It was powerful and alien. Blindly he turned his face up and Rick kissed him. They breathed together, if they breathed at all, sharing the same air. He was moving with Rick now, rotating his hips to take those thrusts as hard and deep as he could.

He only pulled his mouth away from Rick so he could peer between their bodies again. He wanted to watch in fevered fascination as Rick’s cock moved in and out of him.

Rick slid a hand between them and wrapped his fingers round Daryl’s cock. “No,” he rasped, pushing the hand away. He wouldn’t be distracted. “Want you ta make me come this way.”

They were back to kissing desperately, rocking to and fro. Daryl lost all sense of where Rick ended and he began. They were one, they had always been one. He loved, _he loved…_ –

He was aching, throbbing, pulsing, and it was _Rick_ doing that to him. _Rick_ who was around him, inside him, _was_ him…

He never went down without a fight, him, but he knew, dimly, that this wasn’t a fight. Giving in wasn’t surrendering, it was… exaltation. 

He shouted, and it wasn’t just him, it was a thousand voices crying out in rapture. Crying out something that sounded a helluva lot like _Rick,_ or maybe just _fuck._ His body shattered and he came, shooting milky ribbons of cum over his stomach.

“Oh,” Rick said, his blue eyes enormous in his face. “ _Oh._ ” And then he was shaking and trembling too, hips juddering wildly, and he came all hot and hard inside Daryl, whispering that he loved him, he loved him _so fucking much._

But when Rick gently withdrew from him, something broke. Maybe it was his heart, maybe it was something even more deep and elemental. _What the hell is happening to me?_ He brought his hands to his face as the first dry sob wracked his whole body.

Then another and another and they came in a storm, only the storm wasn’t around him _he_ was the storm. Tears forced their way out of his squeezed-shut eyes and sounds of dying ripped from his sealed-shut lips.

He was like a puling infant, helpless, and he fucken hated weakness.

He didn’t beg but mercy came anyway, in the form of Rick wrapping himself around him, chest pressed hard against his back, hands stroking his cheeks, his hair, heartbeat creeping into his, slow and steady, quieting his frantic rabbit-heart.

He let Rick hold him as he fitted himself back together.

Lord, he was one ugly fucken vase.

When the pieces, most of them, were reassembled, he turned in Rick’s arms so they were nose to nose.

“’S over now,” he said. He wasn’t gonna apologize, he was too spent.

“I love you,” Rick said again, like it was the answer to everything. And maybe it was.

He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “I always thought, when I die, aint nobody gonna cry for me,” he heard himself say, full of gravel.

“I would,” Rick said. “God knows, I already have. But you’re not gonna die, Daryl. Not for years and years and years, til you’re really old. Dunno if I’ll outlive you, but at least I’ll be waiting for you on the other side with a goddam balloon.”

_Other side._ Daryl snorted, but his voice came out small. “Ya mean that?”

“Promise you.”

“Never thought I’d live ta see 35,” he said.

“You will.”

He rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. “Dunno that I’ll ever be able ta do that again,” he said. “ _Ever_.”

“You don’t have to,” Rick told him easily. Daryl narrowed his eyes, but Rick fixed him with the Grimes stare. _Trust me,_ it said. _This is axiom._

He shifted, felt the pull in his thighs, his abs. “Fuck,” he grunted. “Ache all over.”

“Bad ache?”

“Nah, just muscles.” He levered himself over Rick and leaned in to kiss him. Meant it to be chaste, grateful, thanks for letting me cry on you, but he was damned if it didn’t turn hot in seconds. Christ, he was addicted to the man, drinking him in like the fucken elixir of life. He caught Rick’s lower lip between his teeth and tugged, growling deep in his throat. And Rick’s eyes were almost black, he _liked_ it feral and a little bit dangerous sometimes. His hand closed round Daryl’s cock.

“Careful what ya wish for, Sheriff,” Daryl told him, rock-hard again in seconds. He bit down sharply on Rick’s pectoral, leaving his mark and marking his territory. “ _Mine_ ,” he growled.

“Prove it,” Rick challenged.

_That fucker._ Rick knew him, knew he was competitive to a fault, and seconds later he’d spilled lube all over the both of them in his haste to claim Rick again. He didn’t let his breath out til he got three fingers crooked inside Rick, teasing the tight ring of muscle open to his liking. They were wild, delirious, the pair of them, slippery with sweat and slick and come. It was a primal feeling, and it was all Rick, no one and nothing but Rick.

“What’re you waiting for?” Rick wouldn’t leave be. “You know I love you, so stop playing with me like I’m the mouse you caught for dinner.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. He slid deep inside Rick and gasped. The sensation… he would never tire of it. He kept perfectly still, holding them in that limbo. They might’ve had souls, he didn’t know, the soul was hard to find, but he knew at that moment he was as close to Rick as he could ever possibly be, body _and_ soul.

“You know how I feel bout you, dontcha?” he whispered.

“I wanna hear you say it,” Rick said.

The hope, the desire, in those blue eyes.

“I love you,” Daryl told him. “Yer the fucken…” _love of my life._ “Yer it for me.”

But they were fucking now, not sweet and gentle but hard and dirty, and he couldn’t take much more of this chitchat. They could talk about love, hell, he’d even say it again cos it felt right in his mouth, _I love you,_ after they were through. “I got your six, Rick,” he said. “Always will.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is THE END! I hope you guys enjoyed the ride! Thank you so much to each and every one of you who read, commented and left kudos. Your feedback and depth of engagement was incredible and I'm super grateful. 
> 
> Some of you have asked about a possible sequel or epilogue for this thing - I don't have anything currently in the works, but ya never know! I'll sit on it. I do have a couple Daryl/Rickyl-centric pieces in the pipeline, which I hope you'll dig.
> 
> Again, thank you so much! - SBM


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